


well i know i'm gonna be

by hereisthepart



Series: love and great buildings [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Long Distance Relationship, M/M, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-10-26 08:47:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17742755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereisthepart/pseuds/hereisthepart
Summary: Jihoon wonders what it must feel like to know the person you love best in this world loves you best too, because he has no basis for comparison. There's a synapse missing somewhere; a vital part of his life he's just somehow never experienced fully. It's a lonely realization, and it happens all the time: to do what he does best–pen songs about love and longing–without even knowing how off base he might be.It's scary. Because what if you try, and come up empty-handed for the trouble? What if you find someone, and they don't love you back?Worse, still–what if they do, and you fuck it up anyway?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot how to write notes, so all I'll say is: a very special thanks to my three best girls in the whole world, Tori Maria and SK, for encouraging me for the past year to turn the scatterbrained fic thoughts I was having into something more concrete. Not a word of this would have been possible without you three. Title is from [sleeping at last's cover of "i'm gonna be (500 miles)"](https://open.spotify.com/track/09MdiypXlcb1kohV3cO03p)   
>  A general warning for occasional drinking, but if there's anything you think should be tagged, please let me know. I also tried to only tag the people/ships who are very much present within the story, but every member of SVT makes at least a small cameo!

Jihoon is lost. Or rather: Soonyoung is lost, and also managed to leave his phone with Junhui, so he can’t text him— _or_ the hot, goth friend whose exhibition they’re here for—to find out where they’ve gone. (Jihoon supposes he could say _he_ has Junhui’s number, but he’s getting free drinks from an increasingly distressed Soonyoung every time they pass a bar set up, and that seems more beneficial to his current situation.)

Soonyoung has dragged him up and down multiple floors for twenty minutes now in a fruitless attempt to reorient himself, but they’ve passed the same installation—interconnected, upside down bicycles stacked high—half a dozen times now. They’re going to die here. No big deal. So with a drink in one hand, Jihoon allows himself to be tugged along, taking bumpy sips as they go. It’s his third one, which is a nice trade off to the whole Dying In A Gallery Because Of Kwon Soonyoung thing.

In a bored voice, he asks, “ _Where_ are we going? Do you have to pee again? I think we passed a bathroom six hours ago.”

Soonyoung’s cheeks puff out when he pouts. “I’m not five,” he says, in a whine Jihoon will not comment on, and hooks a left instead of a right at the next weirdly triangled corner. He gasps, loud enough for Jihoon to hear.

“A familiar face! We’ve saved—oh,” Jihoon bumps into his back and spills a bit down on his neck; Soonyoung swipes at it absentmindedly, his grin turning into something decidedly slick. “Hey. Jihoon-ah.”

“Why is your face being weird?”

“Because it’s very excited to see yours when you realize who’s in the room with us.” Soonyoung cocks his head towards the other end of the hall in a way that isn't subtle at all. 

“You look like an idiot,” Jihoon tells him, taking another sip before tracking where Soonyoung’s gestured to and—fuck.

Surprised, Jihoon coughs, spitting his drink back out into its glass. Soonyoung holds his hands up, thumbs and index fingers angled towards each other like a frame, taking a mental picture.

“Perfect,” he says with barely disguised glee. 

Jihoon narrows his eyes, feeling betrayed, even though the chances are slim to none that Soonyoung would have had any idea who’d be on Minghao’s guest list today. Especially when he'd asked Jihoon at the last moment when he wasn't even planning on coming himself, and _especially_ if the mystery person in question was Kim Mingyu.

“Kim Mingyu, huh?” Soonyoung says, sidling up to Jihoon to sling an arm around his shoulders. “Hey remember when you were drunk at mine and Cheollie-hyung’s and accidentally double-tapped that year-old post where all you could see was his collarbone and his dick?”

Jihoon downs the rest of his drink, and through the ensuing wince says, “He was wearing a _suit_ —”

“Well, yeah, but you knew what was under it. I knew what was under it. He _definitely_ knew what was under it. It was there—”

“Mocking me,” Jihoon despairs.

“Right,” Soonyoung says. Then, thoughtful: “Minghao would call that a focal point.”

“ _How_ ,” Jihoon says with a smile that’s only slightly murderous, “is this helping? At all?”

Soonyoung grins back, exceptionally pleased with himself. He pokes Jihoon’s cheek, narrowly avoiding the elbow aimed at his stomach in retaliation. “It’s not. You should talk to him.”

“No.” Jihoon shakes the drained glass, half-melted ice rattling around, and resolutely does not look in Kim Mingyu’s direction. “Why can't you find your friend? Let’s go tell him how great he is again.”

“He’ll get shy,” Soonyoung says. “Why won’t you talk to Mingyu?”

“Stop being stupid.”

“Is it because he’s hot? You’re hot in a mean way. You work out and have great teeth. You have lots of positive qualities.” 

He navigates Jihoon now, hands on his shoulders, and it’s not like Jihoon can put him in a fucking headlock in the middle of an art exhibit with glass in his hand; he stubbornly, literally digs his heels in instead, until Soonyoung stumbles and accidentally shoves him too hard, nearly taking Jihoon out.

Melted alcohol-flavored ice water sloshes over his hand, and Soonyoung makes a noise as he rights them both, loud enough that—of course—Mingyu darts a glance over to see what’s happened. Recognition flashes; Jihoon shuts down. “Anyway, I’m going to go,” he says as casually as possible, turning and covertly patting his wet hand on Soonyoung’s chest. “Where’s the nearest exit? Oh, right, you have no fucking idea.”

“Mm, I could help you find it,” Soonyoung agrees, right before looking past Jihoon’s shoulder and grinning. “ _Or_ I could do this—”

“Don’t—”

“Mingyu-ya!”

Here lies the problem with Kwon Soonyoung as a concept: he doesn’t have a great grasp on inside voices or secondhand embarrassment, much to Jihoon’s lifelong dismay. So when he yells someone’s name the way he does now, he does it with his whole chest, too-loud, arm raised and waving, like Mingyu hasn’t _already seen them_. He keeps his arm up until there’s a shadow at Jihoon’s back, and Jihoon is forced to turn around and acknowledge the guy who stressed him out so viscerally in a twenty minute span while lying on the floor of an apartment that he deleted a social media account he’s had since high school.

Jihoon adopts his best attempt at aloofness as Soonyoung and Mingyu hug, Mingyu with a drink in his own hand held out of the way. He bends his head with a generic sort of deference when Soonyoung gestures to him, but the cool exterior cracks when Soonyoung immediately moves like he’s leaving. Jihoon shoots out a hand and snatches his wrist up in a death grip. “Wait—where are you going?”

Soonyoung offers a philosophical, “Where are any of us going, really?” and when Mingyu laughs, he adds, “I have to find Minghao and Junhui and tell them both something very important unrelated to anything that’s happened in the last five minutes.” 

“Do you?” Jihoon asks icily, looking him dead in the eye.

Soonyoung just offers up a solitary finger gun and a wink in response and says, “Yep!” They’ve been friends way too long. “Anyway, talk, talk! Get to know each other!”

He’s gone in the next moment, and Jihoon follows him with his eyes as he disappears unsurely around another sharp corner, a faint, bemused frown on his face as he tries to figure out where, even now, he is going. 

“Soonyoung,” he sighs, “is useless.”

Next to him, Mingyu smiles. “Aren’t you friends?”

“He’s my best friend,” Jihoon says with a certain sense of resignation, “that’s not the point,” and finally allows himself to properly meet Mingyu’s eyes. “So. Hello.”

“Hello.” Mingyu cocks his head and gestures with a hand towards their right. “Do you want to…?”

Jihoon steels himself with a breath, and follows.

* * *

(Picture: Lee Jihoon one Spring night, absolutely _devastated_ , sinking deeper and deeper into Soonyoung and Seungcheol’s living room carpet while Seungcheol was at work. In one hand is an almost empty bottle of soju and in the other is his phone and on _top_ of him is Soonyoung, very nearly yelling _you think_ that’s _a thirst trap? I’ll show you a thirst trap—!_ before traipsing off to find fucking eyeliner and a comb to part his hair or something, Jihoon doesn’t remember,

He _does_ remember attempting to push himself up at one point, traitorous hand smudging the screen, and when he finally sits properly and sees what he’s done—a big, red _heart_ splashed in the corner of Mingyu’s photo—he simply lies back down, decides this is where he will live now, and painstakingly types **HOS TO XELETE INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT** into his browser.

Half an hour later, when he attempts to tag Jihoon in his next post, Soonyoung asks, “Did you...delete your account?”

“Yef,” Jihoon says sadly, face buried in the carpet.)

* * *

Over the next hour or so, Jihoon learns, not in order, that Mingyu is twenty-two and on summer break from his last year at his architectural college, that he comes to every showing of Minghao’s he can but he hasn’t been able to make it in awhile, that he’s obsessed with the effect sports culture has had on modern design in the South, and that he, actually, already knew who Jihoon was, if only peripherally.

“You make music,” Mingyu tells him.

Jihoon must look as confused as he feels, because Mingyu laughs. “I think Soonyoung-hyung used one for a performance once? He said he worked on it with you.” He pauses, trying to think of a good way to describe it, before settling on, “It was...intense.”

He means horny. Jihoon's mouth twitches. Soonyoung _does_ tend to egg him on, as if the best way to perform is in harnesses and smokey eyeshadow. 

“Soonyoung likes when I’m loud.” When Mingyu’s eyebrows shoot into space, Jihoon laughs, waving a hand. “The music! The music.”

The eyebrows return to earth. “Gotcha. So not all of your stuff is like that?”

Jihoon shrugs. “I do whatever feels good to me. I mostly just write for other people, so.”

Mingyu nods, eyeing a sculpture in front of them with the most polite _what the fuck_ face Jihoon has ever seen. It’s gigantic hand with a man’s disfigured face in the center of its palm, like a prehensile version of Voldemort and Quirrell. He blinks, and turns to steer Jihoon in another direction. “I know he doesn’t sculpt, but maybe Minghao can explain that one to us later,” is all he says, and Jihoon laughs again before he can help himself. 

“Anyway, I get it. I’m doing my internship this year, trying to get into sustainable planning, and the whole job in and of itself is designing places for other people to step into that I’ll most likely never get to really experience myself.” There's a wrinkle between his brows. “It’s weird, right? Creating this whole concept for someone else to exist in,” he spreads his hands out, an all-encompassing gesture, “in whatever form that is. And then walking away.”

He’s absolutely earnest in the way he leans down, conspiratorial, to whisper, “Do you sometimes keep the best ones for yourself, too?”

Mingyu’s too close, mouth spread into a relaxed smile; Jihoon spies a snaggletooth caught on the corner of his bottom lip and clutches the drink in his hand tighter in response. This is ridiculous. 

He clears his throat. “Sometimes.”

( _Sometimes_ , he thinks if he were someone else, or if he wasn’t alone, that maybe he’d do something with it. For himself. So for now, when he has a hook, or a beat, or an entire track in his hands, and it’s filled with so much of who he is that he can’t stomach the idea of selling it to the highest bidder, he tucks the files away in a separate folder on his computer.)

Mingyu licks his lips. “Can I tell you something, and you promise you won’t make fun of me?”

“No,” Jihoon says, even as a smile tugs at one end of his mouth. 

Amused, Mingyu says, “I know who you are because Seokmin posted this old clip, once, of him singing, and you were playing the piano, and I thought—” He scratches the hair at the nape of his neck. “I mean, I watched it a lot.” 

Oh.

“Oh,” Jihoon says, faltering, and Mingyu stares long enough that he has to shake his head as if to clear it. 

“He was great! He’s always great. But you were—good,” he offers, and then scrunches his nose up, his words unsatisfactory somehow. “You were. Talented.”

Jihoon hasn’t grabbed a drink since they’ve been walking around together, too engrossed to bother looking for a bartop with a short line, so it’s with clearer eyes that he can tell right now Mingyu might be, of all things, self-conscious. He says, “I’m okay. I learned when I was younger. Same with the guitar, but I could probably use a refresher on that one.”

They aren’t even walking anymore, just idling by a less threatening sculpture. Somehow, it’s more intimate like this, even with the sea of voices around them. It might be because Mingyu’s matching his body language—leaning in everytime Jihoon does—so Jihoon has to fight his habit of lifting up on his toes every time he speaks to aim somewhere closer to Mingyu's ear. 

It does not help that Mingyu is _also_ reaching for Jihoon’s elbow, or bicep, or shoulder when Jihoon does do this—a natural inclination that’s driving Jihoon up the fucking wall. Jihoon forces his shoes down flat, but Mingyu doesn’t remove his hand, thumb burning a mark at the crease of Jihoon’s bare elbow, right over his pulse point.

“Do you—do you play anything else?” Mingyu asks him, and Jihoon cants his head to avoid looking at him. 

“Drums, very occasionally.” He flexes his fingers, slow enough to not jostle Mingyu's grip. “Not for awhile. Soonyoung wanted to start a band when we were younger before he realized he couldn’t actually play anything.” He chances a look—Mingyu’s eyes are wide. Jihoon isn’t sure why. “I was really into classical music as a kid. Band stuff: clarinet, a couple of wind instruments.”

After an almost too-awkward pause, Mingyu laughs. “So you’re great at everything, then.”

“I’m just good with my hands,” Jihoon says, self-effacing, and when Mingyu’s eyebrows do a complicated thing in response, _again_ , the tips of Jihoon’s ears go red. He might actually strangle Soonyoung for once.

Jihoon doesn’t get a chance to explain, either way; their phones chime simultaneously and, with comedic precision, they glance down at their respective pockets and back at each other. Mingyu finally drops his hand, and Jihoon barely resists the urge to shake the limb out.

It’s a picture attachment of Soonyoung, Junhui and Minghao looking cool and collected in front of Minghao’s pieces. There’s two unknown numbers in the message along with ❤ SOONYOUNGIE~~~ ❤ ( _not_ Jihoon’s choice) and Wen Junhui (Hot Dancer) (also not Jihoon’s choice).

“You get a picture?” 

“Yeah.” And, in his and Soonyoung’s separate chat: a bunch of question marks, and a sticker of Brown and Cony kissing each other. Again: subtle. When he does turn his attention back to Mingyu, Mingyu looks half like he wants to laugh, and half like he wants new friends. 

“Hao sent me a bunch of those smirking emojis,” he says, tucking his phone back into his pocket, sheepish. “And said he thought I would like to know the exhibit is closing soon, if I wanted to say goodbye before I left.”

Jihoon turns his phone over in one hand haphazardly, feeling just wired enough to be reckless. He asks, “Where are you going?” but it comes out more like a statement than a question.

Mingyu is a respectable distance away from him now, but a smile builds brick by brick at the corners of his mouth. It’s small, slow to spread, something heady and hopeful—it’s _loaded_ , is what it is. The kind of look you get at parties, under dim lighting and the insistent beat pouring through speakers. The kind where you _know_ someone is attracted to you, and you’re attracted to them, and there’s a moment in the middle of it all, a needle pointing north, where hooking up with them becomes a foregone conclusion.

Magnetized, Jihoon inhales and tries very hard to telepathically send the thought that it’d be nice if Kim Mingyu kissed him at some point tonight. Mingyu might read his mind, because he suppresses the smile with a bite and makes this noise in his throat—a short hum, buried under a laugh—before reaching out, curling his fingers in the fabric at Jihoon’s stomach. His hand drops just as quick. 

Mingyu says, “We’re going home.”

* * *

With a single-minded determination, they find their friends in under five minutes, long enough for Mingyu to brush up against him approximately thirty _thousand_ times. Then Jihoon sees Junhui, and Minghao’s mullet, and then Soonyoung’s face, and realizes he is about to have a terrible time. He marches forward anyway, and Soonyoung doesn’t have time to open his big mouth before Jihoon clamps a hand onto his wrist and drags him away, out of earshot. 

Mingyu is more relaxed, slotting into Soonyoung’s place, already laughing at something Junhui’s said. What right does he have to look so calm when Jihoon feels like his entire body is on fire?

“Hello, Jihoonie, did you have fun?” Soonyoung teases. “Your ears are super red.”

 _Because I am on **fire**_.

“Shut up,” he says out loud. “I’m not going home with you.”

Most of the time when Jihoon is made to suffer the great indignity of experiencing something cringeworthy around his friends, he inadvertently tries to curl into himself, a black hole of firsthand embarrassment. Very rarely does he feel the urge to look Soonyoung dead in the eye and wait for the moment where faint confusion turns into a sly, sneaky smile.

“ _Ooooooh_!”

It’s too loud; Jihoon waves a hand and steps closer, glancing over his shoulder. “Stop that! React normally.”

“I sure am reacting normally to this information,” Soonyoung says, infuriatingly cheerful, trying to snake a stealthy arm around Jihoon’s shoulders. “The information being you ditching me at an exhibit so you can climb Mingyu-ya like a tree. Message me after! Or during. Maybe he’d be into it.”

He’s not wrong about the tree part, but Jihoon hates admitting that, so he shoves Soonyoung’s arm off with as much venom as he can muster. “You wanted me to talk to him. I talked to him.”

“And now you’re going to—”

“Finish that sentence and you die,” Jihoon says, the exact moment he catches sight of a Mingyu-shaped shadow in the corner of his eye. Mingyu blinks in surprise.

“Um...hi, hyung,” he says, glancing between the two of them unsurely before he turns his attention to Jihoon. “Are you still—?”

“I’m coming.” Soonyoung snorts. Jihoon smacks him in the chest without looking. “Please ignore him. Let’s go.”

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye?” Mingyu questions, jerking his head back at their friends. Minghao is fiddling with a dangly earring, an arm elegantly draped on Junhui’s shoulder as he leans in to whisper something, studying the two of them. Jihoon barely knows Minghao, but that’s just. A lot to deal with. He can’t even make himself _look_ Junhui in the eye. 

Jihoon lifts a hand at them, surveying the floor. He scuffs the toe of his shoe. “Honestly, I don’t have it in me.”

“Coward,” Soonyoung says, and when Jihoon darts forward on the attack, he laughs and dances out of the way. “Fine, fine! I’ll say goodbye for you.”

He walks backwards, undaunted by the priceless works of art around him. “Have fun. Wear protection.” Next to him, an older woman looks startled. Soonyoung laughs in surprise, finally shamefaced, and gives a jerky bow in apology before miming tugging a strap under his chin. “ _Helmet_ ,” he tells her. “Bike.”

“I can’t stand my friends,” Jihoon says, and it’s a revelation.

* * *

Jihoon means for them to leave as soon as possible. He does. But they get to the car—a roomy, in-need-of-a-wash Hyundai—and Mingyu turns the key, cranks the A/C to combat the humidity sticking to their skin from the short walk, and _stares_. Jihoon notices the driver’s side is conveniently pushed pretty far back for leg room. He can’t be blamed for the executive decision his body makes before his brain catches up.

With artless grace, he crawls over the center console and into Mingyu’s lap, only leaving half a shoeprint on the cupholder, knees jammed between the door and the seatbelt buckle. There’s zero recovery time: Mingyu kisses him before Jihoon’s even got his bearings, off-center and impatient, hands tucking under his shirt. They press against his stomach before one slides to his hip, the other reaching out to hook the lever and let the seat fall back a few more inches. 

The move is smooth enough that Jihoon laughs, this trembling exhale right up against Mingyu’s mouth, before cupping his jaw with both hands. It aligns perfectly this time, and one of Mingyu’s palms find home under his shirt again, flat against his back to coax him closer. They’re too constricted to settle the way Jihoon wants to, so he lets a heavy hand fall to Mingyu’s lap and instead revels in the way Mingyu’s breath shudders, mouth half-open against Jihoon’s, body sinking deeper into the driver’s seat. 

It makes sense, then, that the hairs on the back of Jihoon’s neck stand on end. Mingyu familiarizes himself with Jihoon’s collarbone peeking out from his top, and Jihoon lets his head fall back, eyes closed, fingers curling into Mingyu’s hair. He sighs, not for the reason he wants to, and thinks it's a little like Spidey senses, except instead of ducking a weapon or a bus he’s acutely aware that he's about to be embarrassed.

He tugs on Mingyu’s hair to get him to lift his head, only Mingyu makes an interesting noise that reverberates along the tendon of Jihoon’s neck and presses his face in harder, hand squeezing Jihoon’s thigh. Jihoon files the information away for later and pulls again, murmuring, “Wait—wait.”

Mingyu lifts his head, looking dazed. “What?”

For fun, Jihoon tightens his fingers, knuckles to skull, and watches as Mingyu’s eyes fall half shut. Jihoon is going to lose circulation in his thigh, maybe, but it seems worth it. 

“Do you have a high threshold for embarrassment?”

Mingyu says, “No.”

“That’s too bad,” Jihoon replies, letting go to launch himself fairly successfully over the center console and back into the passenger’s seat. He adjusts his pants before jabbing the button to lower the window and gesturing with his free hand, already exhausted. “Because this is about to happen.”

Soonyoung doubles over, beaming wide, waving. “Hi! I remembered what the car looked like. The buttons on your shirt are undone, Mingyu-ya."

Mingyu inches a surreptitious hand up to his throat. Jihoon doesn’t even remember doing that. In solidarity, he fruitlessly combs down his hair, and it’s only when he peeks at Soonyoung does Soonyoung smile, smug. “Forgot you have the keys.”

“You could’ve just texted,” Jihoon says with a squint. “You know that, right?”

Soonyoung lounges against the door, arms crossed on the open window. “So you won't give me them?”

“You’re still out, too,” Jihoon bites out. “And I need them to get into the apartment.” 

“What?” Soonyoung brushes this off with a wave of his hand. “Who cares about that? I have to be up early tomorrow for class. You can just come get them from me from the studio if you need them, it’s not like you’re going home tonight.”

Mingyu chokes a little.

“I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life,” Jihoon tells him darkly. 

“Well, that’s a lie,” Soonyoung says, launching halfway through the open window to chuck Jihoon under the chin. To Mingyu, he directs: “Please take care of Jihoon-ah. He’s very mean, but cute when he’s sleeping, at least—”

“Hyung, I’m going to put the windows up and leave now,” Mingyu says carefully, and Jihoon hides a smile behind his hand. “Don’t choke. Please.”

“You either!” Soonyoung says, sliding out of the window to head back inside.

“I regret,” Jihoon tells the dashboard pathetically, “so many decisions in my life that have led me to this point.”

Mingyu laughs, shifts the car into drive and pulls out of the parking space. If the tires screech a little, Jihoon figures it can’t be helped.

* * *

Somewhere between Mingyu’s front door and his bed—shoes kicked in multiple directions with abandon, clothes yanked off much the same way—Jihoon gets this achey, mildly guilty feeling in his stomach. It doesn’t go away, not even when he kneeling between Mingyu’s legs, hands reaching everywhere. Maybe _particularly_ then, because Jihoon hooks up with guys plenty, thanks, but never while he’s couch surfing, knowing the date and time of his pre-determined escape. 

It’s a weird thought to have mid-blowjob. Distracting, possibly, just like the noise Mingyu keeps making, like the one in the car when his hair was pulled, and Jihoon bobs his head once, twice, and can’t take it anymore; he pulls off, smearing a fist across his mouth. Before Mingyu can say anything, Jihoon surges upward, a wave crashing in, and kisses him. It’s clumsy, gasping—there’s not enough air in his lungs, there will never _be_ enough air in his lungs—and between breaths he manages to get out, “I don’t live here.” 

“What?” Mingyu mumbles against his mouth, mostly sounding like he doesn’t actually care. He makes a half-hearted attempt to push Jihoon down by his hips, eyes shut, back arching. Impatient. “I—what?”

“I moved after I graduated.”

With a palm under his jaw, Jihoon holds him in place to look at him, though his resolve crumbles when Mingyu fidgets, a hand slipping to the back of Jihoon’s thigh, the pads of his fingers grazing thin, bare skin. 

“What?” he says again, out of it. “Is that—is that—can this wait?”

“To LA.”

“Sure,” Mingyu agrees. “Okay.”

“But it’s—”

“I _know_ where it is,” his smile is placating, and he strains up against Jihoon’s hand, shaking his head, already reaching up to cup Jihoon’s face. “Yeah, whatever—”

“Stop thinking with your dick,” Jihoon pleads, even as he leans into the kiss. 

Mingyu sits up with Jihoon in his lap, says, “No,” and keeps going, going, going until Jihoon’s on his back. “You’re not going back tomorrow or anything are you?”

“Next week.”

“Great, let’s talk about it then,” Mingyu tells him, swaying close, teeth on his bottom lip. Whispering: “Pull my hair again like you did in the car.”

Laughing, Jihoon covers his face with his hands. “Next week?”

Mingyu slumps against him, head on his chest, knocking Jihoon’s breath out of him. “I give up. You’re gonna make me _cry_.”

“Oh, be quiet.” He grabs Mingyu by the biceps and maneuvers him up and off; Mingyu looks down at one of Jihoon's hands, at the muscles jumped out along his arm. He does briefly seem as if he’s going to cry, head halfway off the edge of the bed. “I was trying to be nice!”

“Please don’t let me come and also explain to me what maps are,” Mingyu speaks like he’s lecturing, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I think there’s an ocean somewhere very close to here and I would love to see it sometime.”

“I liked you better when you were being tree-like and charming,” Jihoon mumbles, pressing a single, absentminded kiss to Mingyu’s sternum, and then another lower, another slower. 

“ _Tree_ -like?” His voice is reedy, cracking down the middle when Jihoon finally, _finally_ , shuts up.

* * *

The sensation of waking in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar apartment is a disorienting one. Jihoon pushes himself up, resting his weight on one hand, head lolling onto his shoulder, eyes narrowed against the daylight. He’s naked still, and he squints particularly hard at the open bedroom door in front of him, at the noises coming from beyond it, before he remembers where he is. 

Bleary-eyed, he smiles—a gentle, upward tilt at both ends, half a wince as he stretches out some well-earned aches. His phone is somewhere downstairs, and there’s no clock, but there is soft light streaking through Mingyu’s curtains and the unmistakable scent of breakfast. Jihoon drags himself out of bed to find his underwear, and decides after a moment’s hesitation to pluck a shirt draped over a desk chair outside the room and pull that on, too. It’s oversized, skimming the tops of his thighs, and he adjusts the neck as he pads down a compact, spiral staircase on soft feet.

A wall juts out at the bottom, allowing him to peek into the small kitchen without being seen immediately: Mingyu’s puttering away in front of the stove, bare-chested—brave, Jihoon thinks, with the flame still going—and is bopping along to a slow, drum-heavy track playing over unseen speakers. Unnoticed, Jihoon watches him from the doorway as he ladles equal portions of soup and rice into bowls on the counter in front of him while the rest of their breakfast cooks. He’s singing under his breath, and Jihoon lands both feet on the ground, hand curling over the wall, cheek resting against it. 

“Hey,” he says, and Mingyu starts, surprised by his voice, before grabbing a small remote off the counter with his free hand and aiming it somewhere over Jihoon’s head. The music softens, and Jihoon grips the wall a bit harder, because Mingyu’s wearing _glasses_ and it’s _terrible_.

Mingyu smiles, brandishing a small knife. “Morning!”

“You’re wearing glasses.”

The knife wilts in confusion. “Yeah?”

“You’re,” Jihoon steps out fully, shrugging, “just wearing them. You weren’t wearing them yesterday.”

“I look nerdy in them,” Mingyu says in a small, defensive voice. “You don’t like them?”

Jihoon smiles in spite of himself. “Oh, I hate them.”

The distance between them is short enough that he can reach out and tap the center of Mingyu’s chest with light fingers, aware of the gesture only after it’s happened. His smiles falls, touch trailing down, wondering idly how long they have until the food gets cold.

Mingyu frowns. “You can’t do that while I’m holding a remote and a knife.”

“Grow up, you still have a mouth,” Jihoon says with a scoff, already up on his toes. Mingyu laughs, hushed, and kisses him. His glasses knock into Jihoon’s forehead—their only downside, so far—and he straightens out after, turning back to the stove. Jihoon decides to let him work, hand running idly across Mingyu's shoulders as he crosses the room.

This place is different in the light of day when Jihoon isn’t trying to make a stumbling beeline to a bed with his hand down someone’s pants. It’s not spacious—goes up instead of out—but sun fills every corner. Jihoon takes careful steps, clocking a few things here and there: the leaves of a prospering fern hanging from a geometric planter at the edge the kitchen; a framed art piece hanging on the wall, signed **徐明浩** in delicate brush script; a beat up tablet and pen resting precariously on the corner of the table. The kitchen leads directly into what looks like a compact living room turned study/work space: there’s a sofa pushed up against one wall and a bare bones TV/console setup in front of it, a couple of drawings tacked up on a bulletin board, a stack of blueprints on a drafting table in the corner, just enough space to do one thing at a time.

The burner shuts off, and a pot scrapes against the stove. Jihoon walks to the lone window and peers out at the buildings a couple stories below them. It’s overwhelming like this, impossibly anonymous; a city he doesn’t belong to anymore. 

“Nice view,” he comments when he feels Mingyu sidle up next to him. “Know what I can see from my bedroom window? A brick wall.”

Mingyu laughs quietly, long and lean and bare-chested, shoulder pressed to glass; Jihoon wonders what the two of them look like, from the outside in. He taps the glass with a finger, looking down at the street. “Do you miss it?”

Jihoon shrugs. “Sometimes. Mostly, I miss the people. Kind of hard to keep up when you’re consistently sixteen hours behind everybody else.”

“So why'd you do it?”

“Work,” Jihoon answers, because it's straightforward enough. The long version is: he couldn't remember the last time he'd felt genuinely happy with where and who he was despite the wonderful people around him, and uprooting his entire life to start over in another country seemed easier than therapy. Besides, Jisoo introduced him to enough displaced Koreans for Jihoon to navigate the city well enough now. It’s all echoes of home, enough to sustain him.

“When do you go back?”

“Eight days.”

Jihoon turns his head to look at the food laid out on the table, beyond the open doorway. Something tells him this isn't anything special for Mingyu, that he probably eats like this every day he can—not like Jihoon, who subsisted mostly off instant coffee pre-intercontinental flight, though now it's just evolved into an expensive, complicated order from the Starbucks next to the studio.

When he turns back, he finds Mingyu regarding him for a long beat, too long, until Jihoon shifts, uncomfortable under his gaze. 

“Well, do you have any plans this afternoon?” he asks, and the truth, Jihoon’s schedule is packed most of the days he’s here. Tonight alone, he’s supposed to head to the Hong-Yoon household for a belated, lowkey birthday party for Seungcheol, held off until Jihoon came back.

But that isn’t until late, and anyway, this might be an extenuating circumstance: the food smells great, Jihoon's bones ache in the best kind of way, and Mingyu looks really, _really_ good in the soft morning light spilling into the room. Jihoon wants to eat, and he _definitely_ wants to have sex again, preferably more than once, possibly on this sofa, and then maybe ask Mingyu what all the little lines on the blueprints mean. It’s fine. He can give himself a few more hours. 

“I'm free,” he lies, and Mingyu smiles.

“That’s good enough for me.”

* * *

Jihoon’s sitting on the counter an indeterminate amount of time later, dirty dishes in the sink next to them, Mingyu between his legs and attached to his neck, when he remembers he was supposed to meet Soonyoung at the studio to pick up his keys. With a hand clutching Mingyu’s shoulder, he swears, _loud_ , and Mingyu must read it as encouragement, because he jerks Jihoon off the counter roughly, hands seizing his thighs to wrap them around his waist.

Jihoon nearly tips too far back before his arms shoot out to circle Mingyu’s shoulders, the movement knocking the breath out of him. It’s possible his brain short circuits, and he forgets what he was in such a hurry for for a minute, maybe two, adjusting until he’s got one hand on the nape of Mingyu’s, the other in his hair, which, right—

“What time is it?” he asks in a rush, swallowing hard when Mingyu’s hand tightens at his waist. 

“Is this a thing for you?” he volleys, angling his head back to look at Jihoon. He’s breathing through his nose, tongue peeking out to lick his lips. “Interrupting yourself during the worst possible moments?”

“I need to get Soonyoung’s keys, he’s only at the studio until eleven.” He wriggles, which is absolutely a mistake, before uncrossing his feet at the ankles and dropping down to the floor. Embarrassingly enough, he’s unsteady, trembling, and he sways before Mingyu holds him by the elbow.

Mingyu looks _way_ too proud of himself, so Jihoon steps on his foot. 

He’s worked up still, reaching around Mingyu to look at his phone before cursing again—they’ve got half an hour, tops, and the studio is at least twenty from here, if Jihoon’s guessing right. He scrubs his hands through his hair, and tries to remember where he kicked off his pants last night. “I’ve gotta get dressed and then call a cab.”

Success! He finds them on the floor near the other end of the kitchen table. He’s got one leg on, hopping on a foot, realizing his shirt is just...gone somewhere, when Mingyu says, “I can take you,” from where he’s now pulled himself up onto the counter. 

The pose is an attempt at insouciance, but Jihoon can also see that he’s hard, so it doesn’t really work. But still. It’s careful: he’s hedging his bets, the offer just casual enough that if Jihoon declines he can just shrug, _no worries_. 

Jihoon knows he doesn’t have time to worry about all the ways this is probably a bad idea—Soonyoung was supposed to pick up last minute decorations and get ready at Jeonghan and Jisoo’s, plus Seungcheol’s out with Wonwoo, so if Jihoon doesn’t catch him now, he probably won’t have time to change, let alone shower, before the party tonight.

“Fine,” he agrees, zipping himself up. He flattens the hair at the back of his head, wondering if it looks as messed up as it feels. 

Mingyu laughs—snorts, really—hopping off the counter to slip his phone in the track pants he’s wearing. “Lost cause, hyung,” he says as he brushes past, grabbing a hoodie and a set of keys off the hooks at the door. “We both look like we got fucked. _And_ you haven’t brushed your teeth yet, which is pretty gross.”

“It’s your fault,” Jihoon mutters as he tugs his shoes on, leaving the laces untied. Mingyu gets his on just as swift, and he holds open the door, Jihoon ducking under his arm. 

“I know,” Mingyu says, the brat, leading the way to the elevators.

Jihoon fights a smile in response.

* * *

Half the room erupts into applause when Jihoon walks into Soonyoung’s studio. To be fair, there are only a handful of people still there, but it’s enough that Jihoon’s face _burns_ when Soonyoung tosses his head back and cackles from where he’s talking to Chan, elbows on the barre set to the side. 

Mingyu got him here on time, but at what cost?

“You _brought_ him!” Soonyoung crows, and nods as if to say _see? Told you!_ to where, embarrassingly enough, Junhui is sitting on the floor packing up. He’s wearing a cropped sweatshirt and winks when he notices Jihoon is looking at him, because all of Soonyoung’s friends are demonic assholes. Jihoon included.

“You have a bruise on your _neck_ ,” Junhui informs him, eyes glinting, as he slides the strap of his duffle bag over his head and joins Chan and Soonyoung by the mirrors. “And you’re wearing the same clothes you were wearing yesterday.”

There’s a collective snicker that runs along the group as the last of them filter out, though none of them are actually brave enough to look Jihoon in the eye as he and Mingyu walk further into the room. Jihoon curls his hands, held close to his chest. Maybe if he hopes hard enough, the ground will open up and swallow him alive right here, right now.

He says, “Keys.”

“Different shirt though,” Soonyoung comments, head cocked as he takes Jihoon in. “Too big.”

“Soonyoung-ah, _keys_.”

“His shirts are always big,” Junhui says. “But it is different, you’re right.”

Chan calls out to Jihoon, “Why’re your shirts always so big anyway, hyung?”

“It looks good on him,” Mingyu says. It sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. 

Jihoon turns to him slowly, his smile desperate. “ _Please_ don’t give them any ammo. Keys!” he barks, whipping back around.

“I’ll give them to you,” Soonyoung starts, easily enough, “but only if he agrees to come to the party tonight.”

Chan nods quick, grinning, shooting hand out to clutch Junhui’s shoulder, like the concept of Mingyu at a party with him is too much to bear. “Ooh, yeah! It’ll be nice! My friends are coming too.”

“No,” Jihoon tells him, the same time Mingyu says, “Sure, okay.”

They look at each other. It’s not awkward, really, just—weird. Mingyu shrugs, hands shoved in his pockets. “I don’t have to.”

“It’s not—” It’s not that Jihoon doesn’t want him to _go_ , it’s that his friends are barely functional around _him_. If Jihoon brings someone everyone knows he’s slept with—which they _will_ —he won’t have one minute of peace the entire night. But he shakes his head, closing his eyes, knowing when he’s lost. “You can come.”

“Bet that’s—”

“If you don’t stop talking, I really will strangle you,” Jihoon tells Soonyoung, not even bothering to glance over his shoulder. 

There’s movement behind him, and then Mingyu's reaching out, off to the side, to catch the keys Soonyoung throws his way. “The shower’s too small for two people, but the water pressure is nice. Don’t have sex on my bed.” Mingyu ducks his head, laughing, tugging at the back of Jihoon’s shirt to drag him out when Jihoon abruptly turns, ready to fight.

“I’m going to fuck him in your room, _twice_ , and never tell you where,” Jihoon threatens, stumbling, the neck of Mingyu’s shirt catching him in the throat. “And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself, asshole.”

“That’s fair,” Soonyoung says.

* * *

They’re late, only because Mingyu looked at him funny when Jihoon stuck a baseball cap on his head, like maybe he hadn’t eaten in awhile, and whatever, Jihoon’s not _immune_. But then he got paranoid, and made them both take another shower—and Soonyoung can bite him, by the way, because you absolutely can fit two people in it if you try really hard and one of them is, maybe, possibly, a little shorter.

But now they’re _late_ , which is fine, because it wasn’t a surprise party, except everyone will assume it’s because Jihoon was having sex, which isn’t exactly untrue. They’re on Jeonghan and Jisoo’s doorstep now, where they have been for the past three minutes and counting, mostly because Jihoon can’t make himself knock. He, at least, takes comfort in knowing he’s already seen almost everyone he actually talks to the past few days he’s been back, so he won’t have to say hello _and_ tote Mingyu around.

A bead of sweat trickles down his back.

“Oh. Minghao’s here,” Mingyu says, tapping away on his phone. He’s still wearing the track pants with the tapered legs from this morning, but he borrowed one of Jihoon’s shirts, and it fits better than it has any right to. 

“You didn’t tell him we were outside, did you?”

“No, but I’m hot,” Mingyu complains. “And if you don’t knock soon, I will.”

“I’m emotionally preparing myself,” Jihoon says, but he knocks anyway, shoulders tense. 

From inside, someone yells _COMING!_ and the door’s yanked open a moment later, Seungkwan’s smiling face greeting them. The grin gets wider when he sees Jihoon before his eyes shift over to Mingyu. “Oh! You are tall, Channie was right.”

To Jihoon, he directs: “Seungcheol-hyung’s in the kitchen. He’s mad at you because you didn’t tell him you weren’t coming home last night.”

“He’s not my _dad_ ,” Jihoon says, letting Seungkwan give him a half-hug as he slips past before reaching behind him to pull Mingyu in, too. They take off their shoes as Seungkwan closes the door. “And I figured Soonyoung would blab anyway.”

“Hyung said it was the _principle_ of the thing,” Seungkwan informs him, and then bellows, walking into the living room with them: “He’s here! And you all owe Wonwoo-hyung dinner.”

When Jihoon, in confusion, finds Wonwoo—sitting on the sofa next to Soonyoung, who looks entirely too smug for someone who is going to have to wash his sheets before he goes to bed tonight—he simply smiles, pushing his glasses up. “I bet you’d be late.”

Jihoon pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Do I even have to introduce him at this point?” he asks aloud, even as Mingyu gives a perfunctory bow to the room, and for the second time that day, Jihoon is faced with an obnoxious amount of clapping. It’s like they gain sustenance off making his blood pressure rise.

“This is as good as it gets,” Jihoon says to Mingyu. “This is my peak. Just so you know.”

“I like them,” Mingyu tells him with a smile, and Jihoon needs a drink, because he already wants to kiss him again. “Whose birthday is it—oh,” he gets dragged away by Chan, who promptly takes him straight to where Hansol, Seokmin and Seungkwan have gathered, gossiping not-at-all covertly in the corner of the living room. 

Jihoon takes a sweeping look around the room. There’s music playing from a bluetooth speaker, and someone’s connected their Switch to the TV to play Let’s Go, Pikachu!, and even though he knows he’ll spend most of the night acutely aware of where Mingyu is at all times, it’s nice to be here. Everyone has already more or less gone back to what they were doing before, having sufficiently embarrassed Jihoon enough, so he makes his way to the nook where the kitchen is, knowing Mingyu will be fine on his own. 

Probably.

* * *

Seungcheol’s downing a shot with Jeonghan when Jihoon finds him, and the wince he makes turns into a frown. He’s definitely tipsy already. Before he can say anything, Jihoon tells him, “Sorry for not texting yesterday. Also your birthday present is that I didn’t get naked on your bed. You’re welcome.”

“ _What_?” Seungcheol says, but Jeonghan looks _delighted_ by this turn of events, and from where he’s sitting up on the counter, Jisoo laughs behind the bottle in his hand. 

“Soonyoung was worried you probably meant the threat this time. He’s handsome, by the way.”

Jihoon groans, waving this off, and buries his face against Jeonghan’s shoulder when he gathers him up. “Is everyone being mean to Jihoon-ah today?” he clucks, and Jihoon nods miserably. Jeonghan flicks his ear. “Good, you deserve it.”

“Ugh, get off of me,” Jihoon says, shoving a laughing Jeonghan towards his boyfriend. “Anyway, I really am sorry I didn’t text.”

“It’s okay,” Seungcheol says, but in a voice that says _I was very worried you were dying somewhere until our other idiot best friend told me you were just getting laid_. “You brought him though?”

“Soonyoung invited him,” Jihoon says, which isn’t the answer to the question Seungcheol’s asking. “It felt rude to say no.”

He cranes his neck to peer into the living room; Mingyu’s migrated to the sofa, sitting on the arm while he chats with Junhui. Someone’s already handed him a beer. 

“He’s nice. I don’t normally like nice—”

Seungcheol scoffs. “Like you didn’t date Daniel for _months_ —”

“It was _two_ months, and he was persistent,” Jihoon argues. “And we’re not—anything. We met last night. I’m leaving Thursday.”

“Shua and I were long distance while he finished school,” Jeonghan says in that knowing tone he gets sometimes, like he can already see every path you’re going to take before you even get there. He’s holding Jisoo’s hand, and doesn’t even seem to realize it.

“You already knew him, that doesn’t count. Nothing you two do ever counts for regular people.”

“Well, okay,” Jisoo says, mock-insulted. “So you’re _not_ gonna marry Mingyu, then?”

Jihoon raises his eyes towards the ceiling with a long-suffering sigh. “Can I please just be drunk already? Can you let me have that, if nothing else?”

“Fine,” Seungcheol allows, digging into the fridge to grab a couple bottles of lager hand one off to Jihoon. “But only because I think if you get any more wound up tonight, you’ll snap.”

He’s smiling now, at least, and even though Jihoon saw him yesterday morning before he left for work, he falls into the hug Seungcheol gives him. Seungcheol darts a kiss to the top of his head, too, which Jihoon lets him get away with only because it’s his fake-birthday. 

“Bottoms up,” Jihoon says, only a little sarcastic, and clinks their bottles together.

* * *

Later, Mingyu accompanies them to the subway, mostly because they could use the help carting an exceedingly drunk Seungcheol around. By the time they’re standing outside his and Soonyoung’s apartment building, Mingyu and Jihoon have lapsed into stillness, awkwardly and obviously waiting for their friends to go in. 

Seungcheol, an arm around Soonyoung, rolls his eyes and says, “If y’aren’t coming in, can you text this time?”

It manages to break the awkwardness; he and Mingyu laugh—at Seungcheol, at each other, down at their shoes. They both know they won’t. Jihoon _can’t_ , but. It’s tempting. It’s been a weird day.

“We should get you some water,” Soonyoung says, patting Seungcheol's head. “You comin’ in?”

This is aimed at Jihoon; he waits for an answer, and it’s a genuine question, no bullshit, no intent to wind Jihoon up. Jihoon smiles, nodding, and takes the out. “Yeah, give me a minute.”

Soonyoung nods back in confirmation, hefting Seungcheol up a bit higher. “It was nice seeing you again, Mingyu-ya. Feel free to hang out whenever.”

“Thanks, hyung,” Mingyu says. “I will.”

It’s a pleasant exchange, as far as a moderately tipsy Kwon Soonyoung goes, which is why it is entirely unsurprising when he gets the front entrance to the building open and adds, looking right at Mingyu: “By the way, he definitely wants to see you again, even if he pretends he doesn’t.”

“You were so close to minding your own business,” Jihoon tells him sadly. Soonyoung just shrugs and shuts the door. This is what Jihoon gets for having a best friend whose known him since he was eighteen.

Once they’re alone, the silence stretches out again. Jihoon doesn’t know what to say, so he settles on, “This was fun.”

“Yeah,” Mingyu nods. And inhales sharp, just remembering: “Your–your shirt is still at my place.”

“Oh, right. And I guess yours is upstairs, too?”

“Yep.”

Mingyu keeps fidgeting, and ends up shoving his hands in his pockets like that’ll help. _Oh, fuck it_ , Jihoon thinks. 

“So—”

“Soonyoung’s not—”

“What?” they both ask, but Jihoon shakes his head. 

“I—Soonyoung’s not wrong.”

He can’t make himself look anywhere but the ground. Mingyu’s voice is edging on impassive when he says, “But?”

The ends of Jihoon’s mouth quirk up, even though nothing is particularly funny at the moment. “I’m only here another week. I don’t…” He stops. He doesn’t say: _I don’t want something new to miss when I go_.

“Of course,” Mingyu says. It really sounds like he means it, and Jihoon reaches out, hanging onto the front of his shirt, needing—something. 

“But—we can still—it can just be for the week.”

“For the week,” Mingyu echoes, nodding along. “Yeah.”

“And then,” Jihoon trails off, hoping Mingyu will finish:

“We can stay friends.”

“Yeah,” Jihoon replies. “Friends.”

* * *

(Mingyu says he’ll text, and then, miraculously: he does.)

* * *

A couple days before Jihoon is supposed to leave, there’s another party, at Seungcheol and Soonyoung’s, this time. It’s bigger than the last one, where even Jihoon doesn’t know half the people, and the place is so crowded and noisy he can barely hear himself think. It’s partly for fun, partly to say goodbye, but either way, Jihoon’s been antsy most of the night—it’s the same feeling he gets whenever he sleeps on anyone’s couch long enough now, body itching to get back home to his own bed, in his own apartment, even if it’s six thousand miles away. 

Even if it’s six thousand miles away from _this_ : he and Mingyu dancing around each other tonight like they’re both trying to see who’ll break first, Jihoon forcing himself not to react too obviously whenever Mingyu brushes past, deliberately too close, a hand on his hip, or the small of his back, or the nape of his neck—the touch drifting, an absentminded promise of more, if only— 

Well. It’s a combination of being drunk, and the knowledge that he’s seen Mingyu naked plenty of times over the past week or so and enjoyed it immensely, but he gets this weird, swooping feeling in his gut whenever Mingyu catches his eye and looks like he’s trying valiantly not to smile. It’s a little like Jihoon is being...emotionally punched in the stomach. 

And he knows that means they should put the breaks on this maybe, but it’s hard when Mingyu just _looks like that_ , all the time. So when Mingyu, in the midst of Jihoon idly contemplating dragging him into the bathroom, finds him and asks if he wants to get out of there, Jihoon doesn’t hesitate to say yes.

* * *

It’s a mirror image of that first night, half speed. They actually make it to the bedroom with most of their clothes on still—a feat not yet achieved this week. Mingyu presses him against a wall, a hand on his dick, jeans half unbuttoned, and Jihoon is hot, all over, wants to unzip his skin and get a break, take a _breath_. 

It’s not just wanting to kiss Mingyu, or the fact that every time he does, Jihoon’s stupid, ridiculous brain writes another half-forgotten line to the unfinished, neverending song in his head. (Normally when he’s here, he’s on vacation, even from the thing he loves to do most. So it figures that with Mingyu around, Jihoon’s been dying to barricade himself in his studio for days on end until he gets all of this down on paper and set to music so it won’t be a part of him anymore.)

It’s not just that. It’s—wanting to be close. Closer. As close as possible before it all goes away, because it _will_ go away. Every time they do this, it gets that much harder to come back up for air. 

Jihoon walks them to the edge of the bed, crawling up the length of it on his back, hand reaching to drag Mingyu with him. Impatient, Mingyu scrambles off the bed to kick his jeans and underwear off in one go, shirt going next, while Jihoon wriggles out of his own in an attempt to do the same. Then Mingyu trips, and it’s okay, because he’s laughing when he climbs back onto the bed, dropping his weight, head buried in Jihoon’s neck, and Jihoon kind of feels it everywhere.

He knocks Mingyu’s hip with a knee, fighting a laugh of his own, even if its tinged with recklessness. The nudge makes Mingyu shift, pressing a kiss at the center of Jihoon’s chest, and then lower, smeared along his ribcage—fluttering wildly, breath caught in Jihoon's throat—until he preoccupies himself between Jihoon’s legs.

It’s a bit like second nature now, to slide his fingers into Mingyu’s hair and tug while they both slowly come undone. Mingyu holds him down by one hip, and there’s nothing in the air but Jihoon’s ragged breathing, too loud in the quiet of this room, and Mingyu, doing his damndest to make sure Jihoon will remember this week. It’s not long before he pulls once, in warning, but Mingyu just hums, and buries himself deeper.

Jihoon thinks: _my plane leaves in thirty hours_. He thinks: _this ends in even less time than that_. And then, sudden and unrelenting, he comes wordlessly, and thinks of nothing at all.

* * *

“I drew something for you,” Mingyu tells him later, when they’re back downstairs, pretending to watch a sappy, soapy drama. He seems excited, and he rises from the cocoon of blankets they’re buried under to flip through the stack of papers at his desk. “Well, designed it.”

Curious, Jihoon unfolds his legs and follows, looking down as Mingyu finally finds what he was looking for. He hands it off, and Jihoon is grinning before Mingyu even explains:

“It’s a studio. I know I don’t know what the one you rent out looks like, and the set up is a little simplistic, but I tried to—”

“I love it.”

Mingyu shifts next to him, snaking an arm around his waist, tilting his head so he can study it, too, as if he doesn’t already know what it looks like. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jihoon says with a small, wondering laugh. “It’s great. This is great.”

“It's a going away present,” Mingyu says, chin on his shoulder in a way that can’t be comfortable. “Or, well. A ‘you already left’ present.”

He frowns now. “I should’ve framed it, probably. Actually—hold on, I’ll get you one.” 

Mingyu crosses the kitchen and is halfway up the steps to his room before Jihoon follows him, flustered. “What are you doing? It’s fine.”

“You’re going on a plane, you need somewhere safe to put it, and I can just buy a new one tomorrow.”

“ _I_ can buy one for this tomorrow,” Jihoon says, but Mingyu shakes his head, already determined. 

“I’m not seeing you tomorrow, remember?” Right. Jihoon has dinner with his parents. “How do I know you’ll actually do it?”

“Well, I’ll find a folder or something, at least.”

Mingyu sighs, “You’re ridiculous. Look—” he grabs one of the frames off his wall, about the size of a standard sheet of paper, just like the one Jihoon is holding, with a simple black border. He holds the frame gently, turning it over to lift up the latches holding it in place, and when he undoes them all, he’s careful to lift the paper away and trade it for Jihoon’s. 

“This better not be your high school diploma or something,” Jihoon says, flipping it over. “Oh.”

It’s a floor plan, condensed to the size of printer paper, though the kind in Jihoon’s hand is weightier, fancier. He can see neat, boxy writing splashed over it—Mingyu’s, if he’s guessing right. 

“They’re notes,” Mingyu explains, glancing up before focusing back on his task. Jihoon’s fingers hover over it, careful not to smudge as he reads _curtain wall? Context important_. Mingyu’s signature is a miniscule flourish in the corner. 

“What's it for?”

When Mingyu doesn’t respond right away, Jihoon looks at him, brows knit together. The transfer is complete, and he’s holding the frame to his chest now, though he’s studying the floor plan. “Sorry, was it a private job or—?”

“No, it’s,” Mingyu starts to smile, but his teeth come down on his bottom lip instead. He chews for a moment, thoughtful, and then finally meets Jihoon's eye. “It's mine. My home, I mean. It’s my dream house.”

He looks embarrassed, almost. But Jihoon gets it. He’s spent nearly half his life chasing the perfect chord progression, the perfect line, the perfect undercurrent of emotion. He'd give anything to finally put everything down on paper and say _yes, this is it_.

“One day, I’ll be satisfied with it,” Mingyu says in this careful, quiet voice. It’s too close and too earnest for Jihoon to do anything but look up at him and feel the blood rush to his cheeks, feel that knot in his stomach twist again. “And then, I don't know.” He laughs. “I guess I become a trillionaire with lots time on my hands and I make it come to life.”

The moment hangs heavy in the air. Then Jihoon’s face forms a moue and he punches Mingyu gently in the shoulder. Mingyu moves with it, and when he shifts back into place, laughing softer, he’s closer than before. 

“I know, I know,” he murmurs, his fingers wrapping around Jihoon's wrist. With his free hand, he puts the frame down on his bedside table, then plucks the floor plan out of Jihoon’s grip and sets it on top. “Earnest tree has too many feelings.”

“You're gross,” Jihoon tells him, leaning in, eyes shut, waiting. Mingyu kisses him, hands reaching up to cradle his face and hold him steady. When he straightens once more, Jihoon wobbles with warm palms under his jaw and asks, “Are you ever going to let me forget the tree thing?”

“Probably not,” Mingyu says with a smile. His eyes are still closed. Jihoon's flight time is like a brand at the back of his mind, and this is all just—it’s too much. 

It’s not enough.

He buries his face against Mingyu’s chest and mumbles, “Can I sleep here tomorrow?”

After a beat, Mingyu’s hand comes to rest at the nape of his neck. He presses his nose to the crown of Jihoon’s head. “Your flight’s the next morning?” he asks more than says. 

“I know.” Mingyu’s chest is warm under his mouth, and if he concentrates, and presses his lips just so, he can feel a steady beat, begging to be put to lyrics. Jihoon doesn’t say anything else. He _can’t_. He can’t be the one who does it. 

He just doesn’t have it in him. 

“You know...people do this all the time,” Mingyu says, almost conversationally, after a moment. “It’s not like it’s impossible.” Jihoon looks up, chin on his chest. Mingyu shrugs.

And he's wrong.

In Jihoon’s experience, it always seems impossible. And he doesn't have the best track record anyway, even when he _is_ on the same continent as someone. He just. Fucks up. In completely avoidable ways. He always waits too long, or keeps too many things in, or gets too in his head, and it's over before it ever really starts.

You can't have a relationship with someone when you're always expecting to be left, and you definitely can't have one if you're the one doing the leaving. He doesn't trust himself with any of this; he never has.

But, but, _but_ —

Mingyu says, “Why not just try? If it doesn’t work,” he pauses, touching the small of Jihoon’s back, steady, anchoring. “If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. We can at least try.”

( _Trying_ something like this is stupid and impulsive, Jihoon thinks, even if he _does_ want whatever he can get, for as long as Mingyu will let him have it. So: there are a dozen reasons to say no. A hundred, even. 

But Jihoon only needs one to say yes.)

* * *

They spend the morning Jihoon leaves playing tag with his phone every time an alarm goes off, seeing who can dismiss it and fall back asleep the fastest. Before Jihoon knows it, the last one is blaring, the ringtone different than the rest, his “oh fuck, I’ll _really_ miss it if I don’t get up” one, so he makes himself shut it off and keep his eyes open. It’s hard—harder than it should be, really, because Mingyu’s bed is warm, and so is he, curled up next to Jihoon, an arm around his waist. 

When Jihoon doesn’t just snuggle back into him, Mingyu asks, without opening his eyes, “Are you getting up finally?”

“Yes,” Jihoon says. He shuffles half-heartedly, turning, one foot catching Mingyu at the ankle. He thinks—well, he thinks a lot of things, always, constantly, but mostly, right now, he thinks Kim Mingyu looks very soft and sweet lying here. And all Jihoon really wants to do—more than getting out of bed, or catching his flight, or going back to 24/7 production—is kiss him as long as he can in the early hours of this private, lonely morning. 

So he does.

Mingyu’s not expecting it, but he recovers nicely, attempting to snake an arm under Jihoon's side to pull him on top. If he does, Jihoon really _won’t_ get up, so he slides away until his feet are firmly planted on the floor, Mingyu chasing after him, groaning in protest. 

“No fair,” he pouts, arms hanging off the bed. He squints up at Jihoon. “Do you want breakfast?”

“No time,” Jihoon says, crouching beside the backpack he’d brought upstairs to grab new clothes. “Go back to sleep, I don’t have a lot of time to get ready.”

“Hm.” Jihoon glances at him: Mingyu’s sleepy squint has turned suspicious. He curls his arms close, folding them under his cheek. “You won’t just leave if I fall back asleep, right?”

“That’d be mean,” Jihoon tells him, reaching towards the night stand to grab his phone. “And I’m never mean.”

Mingyu looks unimpressed with this answer, and Jihoon swallows, and turns back to the contents of his backpack. He thinks about digging his way to the bottom to grab his own shower stuff, and then decides against it and stands. “I’ll wake you up, Mingyu-ya,” he says as he crosses to the adjoined bathroom without looking at Mingyu, clothes clutched to his chest, phone in hand. “I promise.”

He doesn’t wait for Mingyu’s answer, and lets the bathroom door shut behind him.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, with newly brushed teeth and damp hair, he attempts to shake Mingyu awake; he’s still lying in the same position Jihoon left him in, head pillowed on his arms. Mingyu squeezes his eyes shut, resisting, burying his face into the bundled up blanket underneath him. 

For a moment, Jihoon thinks he won’t wake up properly, and Jihoon will be forced to leave him here, comfortably warm, alone, the image sticking with him for eleven hours as he is inevitably sat next to someone with the sniffles and a sticky-fingered child. But Mingyu sighs, finally pushing himself up to sit at the edge of his bed, tangling the blanket up with him. 

Jihoon steps between his legs, and Mingyu tips his head back, eyes half shut. “You smell like me,” he says with a sleepy smile, and, “I can still drive you,” hands cupping the backs of Jihoon’s thighs to pull him closer.

“I already called the taxi,” Jihoon says. He can’t keep the apologetic tilt out of his voice. “I have to go—”

He huffs out a small laugh when Mingyu makes a noise and buries his face against Jihoon’s stomach.

“Cancel it, you can be late,” Mingyu mumbles, then tips his head up again, chin pressed to the center of Jihoon's chest. “I’ll help bring your suitcase down,” he adds glumly, but Jihoon waves him off.

“No, it's fine.” And, gentler: “Stay.”

They don’t say anything else; Jihoon runs a thumb down the slender slope of Mingyu's nose, across the cut of his cheekbone, then combs a few strands of hair off his forehead. He gathers himself with an inhale, and frames Mingyu's face with tender hands, and he’s not imagining the way Mingyu’s eyes go glassy before he smiles and looks away. He stands with Jihoon, plucking his backpack off the floor and grabbing the phone charger where it's plugged into the outlet. 

He hands both over. “Let me walk you to the door?”

Jihoon takes the backpack and slides it on, lets Mingyu shuffle in close to stuff the charger in a side pocket, already expecting the kiss Mingyu gives him—an afterthought, lips barely brushing. He heads towards the door without bothering to stick his glasses on, and Jihoon follows. 

A different kind of silence settles between them as they descend down the stairs and towards the door; it’s uneasy, and heavy, and by the time Jihoon is putting his shoes back on, he’s just frustrated by it all—relationships, airplanes, oceans. Mingyu grabs the suitcase Jihoon left by the shoes, and opens the door; Jihoon passes him with a frown. 

He faces Mingyu and he wants, suddenly, to ask if he’d visit. He’s been trying not to think about it, but now, faced with the very real conclusion of whatever _this_ is, at least in person, he can think of nothing _else_. Mingyu leans against the door jamb, picking the suitcase up and settling it over the threshold; he opens his mouth, and then closes it, choosing instead to smile. From his back pocket, Jihoon’s phone chimes—his taxi is here—and something awful seizes him and he can’t take it anymore—

He tugs Mingyu down by the neck of his shirt to kiss him. It’s a hard press more than anything else, but Mingyu takes a breath, angling his head better and swoops back in. His arms circle Jihoon’s waist, shoved roughly under the backpack, and before Jihoon realizes, he’s being lifted up. It’s only for a moment, then Mingyu sets him back down, forehead touching his, and he says, “Bye, hyung,” in this _voice_ , resigned and so, so soft. 

A silent directive, Mingyu pushes a gentle hand against his stomach. Jihoon pulls away, grabbing his suitcase and says, “Okay. Alright. Bye,” and he makes it two steps—two and a half, and, no, it’s too serious like this, he _hates_ it—

Annoyed with himself, he turns, already on tiptoe, eyes shut and hands grasping blindly at Mingyu's shirt, “one more,” and Mingyu unfolds his arms, briefly buoyant in the way that he laughs. He gives Jihoon a kiss that is mostly smile, fingers crooking under his chin, then drops another to his nose.

“Ugh,” Jihoon tells him, waving a hand as he turns on heel again, heart ramming in his chest, refusing to look behind him. “Goodbye forever.”

There's another soft, barely there laugh, and then Mingyu's door closes. Jihoon keeps walking, and he tells himself it’s fine if this doesn’t work out, if next month or next week or tomorrow they decide it’s too hard, too weird, too _something_ , and that being friends is the better option. It’ll be easier to deal with, once it happens, Jihoon thinks as he hits the elevator down button. He's too busy to worry about a (nonexistent) boyfriend across the ocean from him, anyway. He lets go of his suitcase to text the driver he’ll be right down, and as the doors slide open, Jihoon hears the short shuffle of shoes down the hallway before arms sling around his shoulders. 

Mingyu settles his weight onto Jihoon’s backpack, teetering dangerously to the left before Jihoon rights them, hands shooting up to curl around Mingyu's forearms. He makes a sound, a sort of undignified squawk, and then a very embarrassing, very _obvious_ , sigh when Mingyu aims an off-center kiss to his ear.

With a sudden rattle, the doors slide shut. There's a beat as the car shoots down, and then Mingyu pushes them forward and hits the button again before settling them into place, his chin resting on Jihoon's head. He says nothing, and after a few second’s pause, Jihoon watches the lit up tracker above the elevator slowly rise back to Mingyu's floor.

Overwhelmed, he touches Mingyu's wrist and says softly, with more care than he's willing to admit, “Do you think maybe you'd be able to visit me?”

Mingyu's hold tightens, just a fraction. He ducks his head, mouth brushing Jihoon's temple. “We'll figure it out.”

The doors open once more. Jihoon steps out of Mingyu's grasp, taking hold of his suitcase and rolling it over the bump. He grabs hold of both straps of his backpack like a security blanket and says, “Then I'll see you soon?”

When he faces Mingyu once more, he feels—he doesn't even know. Something dumb—soft, _fond_ , all of the above, as he watches Mingyu smile slow and small and hopeful. 

He nods, the doors shut, and Jihoon stops clenching his fists.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In all honesty, Jihoon feels a bit like an alien, sometimes. It's like he’s on an excursion far away from home, and if he sorts through enough collected data he’ll finally understand how relationships work, how people work. How he works. He places his friends under these invisible microscopes, trying to discover how they’ve gotten from point a to point b: strangers to friendship to–whatever is next. Wherever it ends up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 🌈 **happy pride** 🌈
> 
>  
> 
> so, i somehow managed to turn my freelance gig into a full time job, hence the uhhh unfortunate wait time. this is actually a split of part two—the other half is roughly the same length, but needs to be edited/tweaked and ive been too exhausted lately to do much of anything; the goal is to get this out before i have to travel for work this month!
> 
>  
> 
> also, a note: i do make reference to jihoon going through brief periods of depression over the course of this fic, but please let me know if you'd like me to tag something.
> 
>  
> 
> as always, you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ljhmyg?s=09) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/ljhmyg).
> 
>  
> 
> 💖

In the midst of it all, Jihoon lives his life. 

A few weeks after he's back in LA, he signs a producer agreement under the company he rents his studio out from that takes most of his work; the album’s due out by the end of the fourth quarter for a release in the first. It’s his biggest project to date since moving out here, and he feels almost giddy when he texts Mingyu the day the ink dries. 

_Bet u already have half of it done!_ Mingyu sends back almost immediately. In a brief moment of confusion, Jihoon checks the world clock on his phone–but it’s only Saturday afternoon in Daehangno, where he knows Mingyu is probably at home, either working on stuff for his internship or trying to relax. 

Once Jihoon’s home himself, showered and toweling off his hair, he FaceTimes Mingyu, who picks up after a couple rings, a massive blur in the middle of the screen.

“ _Hi_!” Mingyu comes into view and smiles, affectionate, and then maybe a bit tipsy when he stumbles in his haste to rise from the floor. “Oh! Hi, hyung. Hi.”

“Hi.”

The lights are dim, but in the periphery of the screen, he can see Minghao with one knee bent, an elbow on it, gently swirling a half-empty glass of wine in one hand as he scrolls through his phone with the other. There’s instrumental music playing on the tv and candles lit in a few strategic places, but Mingyu steps carefully over them as he reaches for the remote to turn the volume down. 

“Forgot you were doing your weirdo, artsy date night thing today, sorry.”

Mingyu pouts. “It’s fun.”

“You’ve gotta be like a bottle in already, of course it’s fun.”

“Two,” Minghao calls, still looking at his phone, though he does smile warmly and raises his glass in hello. “Well, _he_ is. I’m still trying to convince him to not just buy and chug a ten-thousand won bottle of wine and call it a day.”

“We have different labels. He’s being pretentious, but in a nice way,” Mingyu says with a smile. “I keep trying to explain that I’m getting _twice_ as drunk for half the price.”

With a laugh, Jihoon tosses his towel onto the edge of his bed and flops down on his pillow, tucking free arm under his head. He’s exhausted, but he wants to go through his finished track guides before he goes to sleep tonight to see if anything fits the vibe for the album, figures it might be helpful to start off with a base.

“You look cute,” Mingyu tells him. He’s back on the floor now, though he’s resting his cheek against the edge of the sofa, Minghao on the other side of him in the background. “And soft.”

Oh, no. Jihoon’s nose scrunches up and he drops the phone screen-down onto his chest. “Please stop.”

“No, I _won’t_. You’re so cute, hyung. Pick me back up.”

Oh, _no_. 

“You’re drunk, huh,” Jihoon says, raising the phone again. 

Mingyu narrows his eyes. “Maybe a little. But I’d say it sober, too.” 

“Probably not if you wanted to live,” Minghao says from behind him, which is fair.

“You can’t gang up on me from opposite sides of the world!”

In response, Minghao just laughs sweetly and unfolds his legs to stand; Jihoon watches the line of Mingyu’s jaw as his eyes follow him up–which, wow–but Minghao only says, tactful as ever, “I’m going to your bedroom for a bit.” 

“Thanks,” Mingyu says with a smile. He watches Minghao disappear, and when his eyes find Jihoon's again, he looks happy. He fiddles with his phone until it’s set against something on the table, hands-free. “I like seeing your face.”

Jihoon's mouth twitches as he tamps down a smile. “Just wanted to say hi. If you're busy...”

“It's fine, I introduced him to one of my friends a month or so ago, they're supposed to meet up later anyway so he's probably figuring that out.”

“Ah,” Jihoon says. “So he isn't staying over?”

“Pretty sure. He likes stressing JK out, and he got a thigh tattoo last week, so. Why?”

“Call me when he leaves.” 

Interest piqued, Mingyu leans forward and plants his chin on a knee. “It’ll be like..seven in the morning where you are by then?”

Jihoon shrugs, shoulders shifting against his comforter. “So? I like morning sex.”

Mingyu laughs, and bites down on his bottom lip. He glances up towards his bedroom, then back at his screen. It takes a few moments before he says, “Are you...doing that, um, at all?”

“Doing what?”

The next words are directed at his kneecap peeking out from the rip in his jeans. “Having...morning sex. Well. Having sex, I guess.”

Jihoon pushes himself up. Bemused, he asks, “Like jerking off? When you call me, or in general?”

“ _No_ ,” Mingyu’s face is almost entirely buried now, and Jihoon struggles to hear. “I mean. With. People–" He scrubs at his face. “Nevermind, forget it.”

“Are you asking me if I’m fucking other guys?” 

The bluntness makes its way out before he can help it. He’s not sure whether to be offended or confused. He’s _also_ not sure how they even got here. He only wanted to see Mingyu for a few minutes, and now it feels like they're barrelling towards something big and terrible at breakneck speed.

“I feel like you have to know I wouldn’t do that without talking about it. Not–I’m not saying I have plans to, but–?”

When Mingyu lifts his head, Jihoon finds a grimace waiting for him. “No, I know, it’s stupid. You're right–we _didn't_ talk about this stuff before you left. We never really got the chance. And I guess I didn’t…”

Mingyu steels himself with a big breath in, lets it out quick. “I guess I was trying to figure out how to say I didn’t want to keep doing this if that was the case. Because. I’m not. Sleeping with anyone. Including you, technically.”

“I’m...not, either,” Jihoon says, wanting so suddenly to crawl out of his own skin, sure the next words out of Mingyu’s mouth will be a plea to define whatever it is they’ve been doing the past couple of months. “I feel like you're asking me something else, and I don't know how to say I'm not great at dating–well. Anyone.”

Mingyu, with a cheek on his knee, doesn't say anything.

“The last–” Jihoon smiles, and it falters “The last _real_ boyfriend I had–it didn’t even–we were friends first. We kind of fell into it. And then I left.” 

He corrects: “I mean, I already knew I was leaving. So when the time came, we ended things because it seemed easier than figuring out how…" his voice folds into thirds, quarters, "to make it work long distance.”

Mingyu looks away. “Okay.”

The phone drops to Jihoon’s lap, his hand a dead weight; his leg is already jiggling against the bed out of nerves. He holds it up again: “I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I’m–...I’m saying I’m not good with this stuff.”

“I am,” Mingyu says. “Maybe it'd be different with me, and we’d balance each other out,”

and cautious, quiet:

“...I’m a great boyfriend.”

When Jihoon smiles, it’s rueful, the barest tilt at one end. “I’m not.” Might as well be honest. “And...I don’t want to box this into something that’s gonna freak me out before I even see you again.”

Mingyu is gnawing on the corner of his mouth like his life depends on it, and something deep in Jihoon’s stomach dips fitfully. “Listen: I’m saying I _don’t_ want to freak out. I want to see you,” Jihoon tells him, because he needs that to be clear, even if the very act of saying it out loud has a blush clawing its way across his chest, up his neck, making his skin itch. “I like you. Can we let that be enough for now?”

There’s a beat before Mingyu nods without quite looking at the screen, bottom lip still being ground between his molars, though now there’s a frown added to the mix. Jihoon is overwhelmed by that feeling he gets sometimes when he says something as it is in his mind, no frills, all substance, a pure and honest truth–but then: a sudden and intense need for an act of contrition. Like everything about the way he is is wrong, somehow, and he can’t think of anything he’d like more than to snatch up a remote and rewind the last ten minutes of his life. 

“I’m really excited to see you,” he says again, which is true–which is absolutely, completely _true_ , even if it sounds weak. Mingyu, at least, looks at him. “I’m serious. I have a whole list of things I wanna show you–”

“I believe you,” Mingyu says. “I have to go, though.”

“Mingyu–”

“I’m fine. Really,” he says, even laughing a bit. “I’m just–drunker than I thought and don’t really want to focus on this for the rest of the night, okay, hyung?”

Distinctly miserable, Jihoon nods. “Okay.”

Mingyu squints. “I’m not going to ignore you.”

Jihoon doesn’t really want to analyze the flood of relief to his system at that. Instead he offers, “I’d give you an apologetic handjob right now if I could,” and relishes the genuine, if muted, sunburst that makes up Mingyu’s laugh.

“Later,” he says. “You can give yourself one and think about me.”

“Depressing,” Jihoon replies, and Mingyu shrugs. 

“Yeah, well.”

Yeah, _well_.

This is where they’re at.

* * *

Jihoon wishes he could say: you’re braver at this than I am.

* * *

  


  


* * *

Jihoon is already asleep again when the last reply comes in, so he doesn’t see it until he checks his phone a few hours later in the studio. It’s early morning and his eyes hurt a bit, probably from forcing himself awake earlier after a few paltry hours of sleep, but even through a tired squint he sits up straighter in his desk chair. His thumb taps the photo to enlarge it and there it is: a flight itinerary, ready to go. He stares at his screen for a few long, indefinable moments. 

The world is–it's so much. Every inch of his skin is suddenly in _flames_ , a rapid fire flush trawling across his neck and face. In his chest, his heart flutters, stutters, half a beat off. He wants to smile, so he does.

 _Are you awake still?_ he texts through Line, and doesn’t look up from his phone until he gets a response: _semi awake and weirdly already hungover_. The Facetime screen pops up, and Jihoon settles into his chair, head tipped back, knocking his baseball cap askew. He grabs it and tosses it onto his desk and fluffs his hair up with his free hand as he answers. 

“You bought it,” he says when he sees Mingyu’s face, too close to his own screen. He doesn’t see Minghao anywhere–it looks like Mingyu’s in bed. “You bought it?”

“ _Yeah_ , I bought it,” Mingyu says, face half buried in the pillow underneath him. He sounds sleepy, tongue still sloughing heavily through his words, though now it's mostly from exhaustion. “Don’t be dumb, hyung.”

Jihoon sticks his tongue out. 

“You’re a brat. Why? I know my half hasn't gone through yet.”

Mingyu pushes the pillow down with his free hand so Jihoon can see more of his face. “Because I think you’d be a great boyfriend.”

Jihoon swings side to side in his chair, tapping an idle beat against the armrest with distracted fingers. “How many glasses of wine did you end up having?”

Ignoring this, Mingyu tips the phone precariously close to his nose. “See, _I_ think that when you see me, you’re going to forget all these excuses you have, because," he readjusts and points to himself, "I am handsome and nice and funny and a great kisser.”

The thing is–Mingyu isn’t necessarily wrong. It’s easier for Jihoon to overanalyze every relationship he has when he’s not in the room with them. It’s object permanence: he can't trust his own faith in his relationship with Mingyu if he can't _see_ it. Take Mingyu out of the picture and Jihoon isn't entirely sure any brief moments of happiness he's managed to snatch over the past few months actually exist.

“You get it though, right?” Jihoon asks him, picking his legs up to his chest and planting his chin on one. “You get why I want to go slow?”

“I mean...no, hyung,” Mingyu says honestly. “But we’re different people, so.”

“Right,” Jihoon agrees, mostly because he doesn’t know what else to say. They stare; Jihoon clears his throat and looks down to poke at a bruise on his thigh. 

It’s with his head bowed that Mingyu asks, “How long is your list?"

Jihoon pokes harder. "What?"

"Your list?" Mingyu asks again. He doesn’t continue until Jihoon, at last, meets his eye. "You said you had one."

"Oh." He wriggles around. "Long. Lots of–I asked my friends. Here. What they’d want to see again for the first time, and, you know. There’s–I wanted to take to a couple places I know you’d love, I was looking something up–"

By the time Mingyu saves him with a fond, under-the-breath laugh, Jihoon is beet red. He exhales like he’s been popped, his insides empty, then shakes out the ensuing nerves. 

“So it’ll take more than one trip?”

Ah. Jihoon swallows. His heart does this funny, little flip. 

“Several, even.”

The smile Mingyu gives him is crooked in all the best ways; Jihoon finds himself mirroring it, equally tentative. 

“Then I guess I’ll have to come back right away.”

* * *

* * *

One morning mid-October, Jihoon swings his door wide to find Jeonghan on the opposite side of it. He yelps, thinking _finally!_ , and laughs when Jeonghan launches his arms around Jihoon’s shoulders. Jihoon stumbles back one step, two, buries his face in his best friend’s neck, groaning happily when Jeonghan squeezes a bit too hard. 

“Where’s–?”

“Attempting to find parking. Your hair looks even better in person.” Jihoon got restless a handful of weeks ago, got _drunk_ , and then dyed it–well, Ailee dyed it and did some chemical thing, so now it’s a wavy, washed out, rusted brown. He gets a head pat for his trouble as Jeonghan steps in. They don’t have a ton of time, really, enough for a quick peek; when Jihoon’s eyes sweep the apartment under the pretense of new company, he clocks the only truly embarrassing thing he owns in this space: 

Mingyu’s drawing lies framed and tacked up on his wall, off center above where his head lays. He can tell the moment Jeonghan zeroes in on it, too, imagines the ever-increasing beeps of sonar as he pinpoints ways to embarrass Jihoon to the fullest extent possible. 

“Interesting,” he says, either seconds away from rubbing his hands together and cackling or forcing Jihoon to talk about his feelings. Hard to tell. “Very interesting. But all your Nendoroids are in your studio, I’m assuming?”

“I have regrets,” Jihoon announces to the room. 

“About anime? Don't we all.”

“You, this friendship,” Jihoon jams a baseball cap on his head and sticks his keys in his pocket. He slides his shades on. “Can you at least wait until I’m not sober to make fun of me about it."

“Deal,” Jeonghan says as Jihoon pushes him out of the apartment, chest-to-back, a hand on his hip to guide him, nose somewhere between his shoulders. “At least then you’ll be more likely to let me play with your hair.”

He’s already reaching behind him, grabbing a gentle fistful. Jihoon merely tucks in closer. 

“You can always play with my hair, hyung.”

* * *

They find Jisoo a thirteen minute walk away, leaning coolly against what has to be his mother’s car, though Jihoon gets _another_ affectionate pat when they reach him. He may or may not grab Jisoo’s hand, squeezing once before letting go. Their plane landed a couple days ago now, the two of them on a short vacation so Jisoo could visit his family, but this Saturday has been reserved entirely for Jihoon. 

(Even as he carves a life of his own in this place, he still deeply misses his friends. So it’s nice, sometimes, to get days like this, where everything is uncomplicated again.)

They drive to the coast, a burst of pop music loud over the rush of tires on asphalt. Jihoon rests his head against the window and watches the road wind behind them, feeling a bit like a character in a movie. 

“What’s the plan for today?”

Jeonghan pumps a fist and sticks an arm out the window. "Beach day, obviously. Sun And Fun!"

"Sure. Will there be food at least?"

“No.” Jisoo turns on his blinker. "Just stick your hand in the ocean and see what grabs on.”

Fingers pluck at Jihoon’s tapered sweats, a solid black, and then his shirt, also black, and his hat: look at that, black. "You don't even deserve this weather," Jeonghan says sadly, leaning halfway over the center console. 

Jihoon flicks him one the forehead.

"Shut up, I'm on brand; life is suffering."

* * *

The beach day is actually an _event_. Most of Jisoo's friends–Jihoon's now, too, to varying degrees–are at the beach by request of Amber, dead set on one last big barbecue before it gets too cold at night. Jisoo drifts in and out of conversations, from English to Korean to Konglish and back again; he nurses his beers and still ends up tipsy a couple hours in, stumbling a bit as he kneels next to where Jeonghan and Jihoon have set up shop on someone’s party-donated frayed blanket in the sand. 

In the mid-afternoon sun, Jisoo cups his face, smiling into the kiss; he drops another to Jeonghan’s cheek for good measure. 

“Gross,” Jihoon deadpans, closing his eyes behind his sunglasses when Jeonghan falls onto his back next to him. “Disgusting. I can't believe you've done this.”

When they come up for air a beat later, Jisoo pushes the hair out of his eyes and beams. “Want another drink?”

Jeonghan sits and delicately pokes the center of his forehead. “Shuuuaaa, are you going to make it? Get someone else to make it.” 

“Wow,” Jisoo says, pushing himself into a stand. “Okay.”

“I’m sorry, you tend to make it a teeny tiny bit weaker!” He reaches out, grasping one of Jisoo’s sandy ankles. “Just a little bit weaker. I can’t even tell most of the time. You’re very pretty.”

“Let’s break up,” Jisoo says, shaking his ankle free. His mouth twitches. “Come swim.”

“In a bit, I have to talk to Jihoon-ah about hanging his not-boyfriend’s gift on the wall of his home.”

Jihoon adjusts his sunglasses and settles into the blanket, hands folded on his stomach. A strange calm settles over him. “Hyung, this is my nightmare.”

“Your fault for being gay and emotionally constipated,” Jisoo says reasonably. And, as he recedes into the distance: “I’m going to have Jae make your drink and then he can be responsible for you the rest of the night and date you and marry you or whatever.” 

“I love you!” Jeonghan yells after him. “I am constantly overwhelmed by how much!”

Jisoo merely lifts a solitary hand in response, though Jihoon can see his shoulders shake with a laugh. He walks past a handful of friends trying to set up a makeshift volleyball game, nudges Jae in the distance and points their way; Jae laughs, a hand on Jisoo’s shoulder, and Jihoon forgets sometimes, that this is where he existed before he dropped into their lives. That there was just this sun-filled boy named Josh who fell in love and wanted a change. 

When Jihoon first toyed with the idea of moving here–the furthest place he could think to run, like depression can’t cross continents–it was him who helped Jihoon with it all. Jisoo set him up with an interview with the studio via Amber, and also gave him a built-in support system so Jihoon wouldn't always eat alone if he didn’t want to, wouldn't always feel lonely.

Looking out, Jihoon says, "I missed him. I missed you."

Dream-like and happy, Jeonghan stretches, splaying out like a nuisance in Jihoon’s lap. "Mm, that's my boyfriend, did you know?"

“I’m very happy for you,” Jihoon replies. 

Distracted, he brushes Jeonghan’s bangs off his forehead in the ensuing silence, eyes half shut against the rays managing to glint off his sunglasses. It’s testament to who Jeonghan is as a person that Jihoon doesn’t so much as flinch when he says conversationally a minute or two later, “I think I’m gonna ask Shua-ya to marry me this year.” 

It’s October. The volleyball game is suddenly vastly less interesting. 

“Oh? When did you decide this?”

“Right now, I guess,” Jeonghan says. “Or last week. Last year. The first time he kissed me. The day I met him. I don’t know. The thought itself sort of comes and goes, you know?”

“Ah.” Jihoon slides his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. He can't remember the last time he dated someone longer than a couple months. “Well. No.” 

“Well,” Jeonghan wriggles around for a moment, sounding contemplative. “I love him. He’s the best person I know. And he only makes fun of me a little bit when I get drunk and cry looking at cat adoption websites on my days off.”

“All good things,” Jihoon agrees. 

“We’ll get married and have a small ceremony at someone's house. Or elope. I don’t know.” Jeonghan curls in. “You can bring Mingyu.”

Jihoon snorts. 

“What? He's visiting you soon, isn't he?” When Jihoon stays silent, Jeonghan flops onto his back again, head pillowed on Jihoon’s thigh now. He's almost pouting when he says, “Well, _I_ wouldn't spend money on an international flight just to visit someone I don't like. _I_ wouldn't hang something someone made for me above my bed if I didn't like him back.”

“I’m never letting you into my apartment again.”

Jeonghan smiles sweetly. “I'm not making fun of you. Just pointing out facts.” 

Jihoon mock-smiles in return. “I don't need your advice, you've been trying in vain to get Seungcheol-hyung to sleep with you for three years, despite the fact that Choi Seungcheol does not understand hints,” he starts, not meanly. “How do you think you'll convince hyung to marry you?”

“It'll happen someday,” Jeonghan says, mournful, though Jihoon isn't sure to which dream he is referring. “And anyway, you can try to deflect all you want, but you still like Mingyu enough to put his stuff somewhere you’ll always see it right before you go to bed.”

Which. Yeah. Yes.

“Maybe,” Jihoon allows.

An unopened beer lands in the general vicinity of their blanket. They both look up and find Jae near the volleyball set up cupping his hands over his mouth. “You’re being boring and I don’t make drinks. Come over here!”

With a grin and on his hands and knees to grab the bottle, Jeonghan calls back: “We’re talking about his love life, volleyball can wait!”

“No, I love volleyball,” Jihoon stands, shakes off whatever sand has managed to gather on him. “And drinking.” 

“Oh, sure, one of those things is true,” Jeonghan nods, poking his beer, on his stomach now. “He just gives me this, with no way to open it. Hey, take off your shirt, I heard you’ve been working out since you moved here.” 

Jihoon lets out a laugh, mostly an exhale. He makes a face and lifts his shirt, quick; there’s a pause, and then Jeonghan holds his bottle up with wide, beguiling eyes. “Can you please open my beer with an ab?”

Jihoon turns and walks away on uneven ground. “You’re an idiot.”

“And yet you’re friends with me,” Jeonghan says, back to frowning at his beer. “So what does that make you?”

“Don't know, a genius?” He takes his keys out of his pocket, bottle opener included, and tosses them at Jeonghan. “I always have the upper hand this way.”

Jeonghan’s responding laugh follows him across the sand.

* * *

* * *

The day ends at Jisoo’s family home–Jihoon is staying over today, and then they’ll head out early the next morning to drop him off before heading back to the airport. By two, he’s trying to sleep on the sofa, tipsy, warm, maybe a bit sunburned on his nose. He’s happy, but there’s this buzz under his skin. This confusing, unsettling feeling, like something’s missing. Like his hands are empty. 

Like he wants to talk to Mingyu, face-to-face, without tinny phone speakers and reliable WiFi. It’s–weird. Jeonghan fell asleep in the car on the way back, and Jisoo snuck glances every time they slowed down, the remnants of a smile pulling at his mouth, and Jihoon watched it all happen and tried to understand.

Restless, he curls up on the sofa, impatiently fluffing out his pillow before settling back in. His phone is in his hand, and he opens it up to Mingyu's chat, but shuts the screen off before he can do anything else. 

Jihoon watches them sometimes, when he knows they aren't looking. Because it all seems so unreal. He wonders what it must feel like to know the person you love best in this world loves you best, too, because he has no basis for comparison. There's a synapse missing somewhere; a vital part of his life he's just somehow never experienced fully. It's a lonely realization, and it happens all the time: to do what he does best–pen songs about love and longing–without even knowing how off base he might be. 

It's scary. It is, he can admit that to himself, at least. It's all about trying and somehow finding someone you want to spend tomorrow with and _it's scary_. What if you do try, and you come up empty-handed for the trouble? What if you find someone, and they don't love you back?

Worse, still–what if they do, and you fuck it up anyway?

Even now, he has no idea what he's doing, but being with Mingyu so far has meant lyrics and laid beats and song guides; a hand repeatedly cramping from writing on the bus or in the back of a bumpy Uber; typing out gibberish lines in the Notes app in a five am stupor so he doesn't forget once he's conscious again. It's awful to say, but Mingyu will have been great for his career, even after the dust settles. And _everyone_ would yell at him for this, he knows, but it just isn't fair to pin all this hope to one person for too long, anyway. 

Maybe for as much as he wants this–love, somehow, though he doesn’t know what to do with it–the person he is is someone who never fully gets it. So. Maybe he isn’t meant to get something that'll last. Maybe he only gets something that's _enough_ , and maybe this is it.

Not forever, but this, a fall, a winter, a spring. One really great album and a handful of bonus tracks. 

In all honesty, Jihoon feels a bit like an alien, sometimes. It's like he’s on an excursion far away from home, and if he sorts through enough collected data he’ll finally understand how relationships work, how people work. How he works. He places his friends under these invisible microscopes, trying to discover how they’ve gotten from point a to point b: strangers to friendship to–whatever is next. Wherever it ends up.

Jihoon rolls onto his back, phone on his chest, and covers his face with his hands, sighing. 

He just doesn’t fucking _get_ it. He doesn’t understand how you can look at someone, and know they’re it. That it’s possible to just _look at someone_ and see weeks, months, years. Forever. The only reason Jihoon is so great at writing love songs is because there is this deep, desperate desire in him to figure it all out, and that desire bleeds into every track, every hook, every single word he's ever put into this world.

There’s a certain ugliness involved sometimes that he wishes he could stop. When it’s the middle of the night and he’s lying awake in bed, going over the minutiae of every interaction he’s ever had with a former or current _whatever_ , trying to figure where it all went wrong. Where he went wrong. And on days like today, he studies the people in his life who have found this soft, wonderful thing, and a horrible ache eats away at his gut until he feels empty. 

It’s self-pity, and jealousy, and frustration all rolled into one. It’s unkindness directed inward; it’s doubt lacing every thought. 

_Of course them_ , is the reasoning he always lands on when it gets to be too much. Of course. If he’s sure of anything, it’s that these friends, this family–they hold value, and they deserve to have that value repaid to them in unshakeable forms of love. 

So– _of course them_. But also: why not him?

He wants something in this world that he can hold onto. Tangible proof of an unseen concept. He wants to feel so sure that nothing will ever be as good as the moments he finds himself existing in with someone else.

Jihoon wants to look, and just know.

He closes his eyes, turning his phone over against his chest once, twice, then looks up at the ceiling. Mingyu will be here in a month or so, and he didn’t tell Jeonghan because he’d rather swan dive directly into an active volcano first, but it terrifies the shit out of him. He has no fucking clue what to do or say or how to feel and he is so afraid Mingyu will see him again–kiss him again–and realize this is a mistake. 

He drops his hands and picks up his phone instead, tossing it carelessly by his feet, hoping with an ineffectual glare that it dies. This is stupid. Two of his best friends are leaving tomorrow and Jihoon, at least, will always know where he stands with them. So instead of panic-texting Mingyu, Jihoon settles for the next best thing. He throws the sheet off and makes his way across the living room and down the hall, where he knows Jisoo’s childhood bedroom is. 

He turns the doorknob and peeks in. They’re both sleeping, Jisoo facing the wall, so Jihoon tiptoes into the room on light feet and crouches in front of Jeonghan, gently shaking him awake with a single-minded determination he hasn’t felt in awhile. 

Jeonghan’s face when he finally comes into consciousness is an open book, first confusion, then concern as to why Jihoon is waking him up. Jihoon holds a finger up to his own mouth. Then he drops his hand and whispers, “You should do it.”

Still a bit dazed, Jeonghan blinks once, twice, and then his shoulders sink even deeper into the bed. “Oh,” he murmurs, pleased, and his eyes are half shut as he smiles. “You think?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Mm.” Jeonghan inhales slow, exhales slower, and buries his face in the pillow. “Even if I can’t get Cheollie to sleep with us?” he asks, muffled, and Jihoon huffs out a laugh, his hand curling against Jeonghan’s shoulder.

“He might, after this.” 

It’s quiet for a moment. Jeonghan looks at him again and reaches out, sliding his fingers under Jihoon’s chin. Jihoon grabs his hand in response, mouth quirking up at both ends. Tomorrow, the two of them will get on a plane, and Jihoon will miss them the way he always does: fiercely at first, and then with a dull sort of ache that’s part and parcel of being whole countries away from some of the people he loves most in the world. But he has this, now:

“Thanks,” Jeonghan says quietly, twisting their fingers together.

Jihoon is nothing less than happy when he says, “Of course.”

* * *

* * *

Jihoon watches the time on his phone crawl forward, and the closer Mingyu's plane is to touching down, the more he feels too big for his skin, his body, this moment. He’s been forcing it to the back of his mind whenever possible, but faced with the knowledge that he and Mingyu will be in the same room again in roughly less than twelve hours, his mind becomes a litany of hopeful thoughts, each tinged with more desperation than the last: 

_Please let it be the same_ , and _please make me laugh just as much_ and the worst one of all, tucked way in the back, struggling to be heard over the din, _please still like me_.

It’s one am. His fingers twitch, and he sighs before flipping his covers off; he’s settled in front of his computer not five minutes later, already halfway through the boundless chorus in his head.

Might as well put it to good use.

* * *

“Hyung, I’m never visiting you on your birthday again. How is it _this_ close to a holiday here?" And, accusing: "Why weren’t you born a couple days later?”

“I _know_ , I know,” Jihoon whines, too-loud, into his phone. “Are you lost?”

“Probably,” Mingyu says, in the kind of faraway voice that means he's probably squinting at a sign. “No! I don't think. I have my suitcase; I’m following a couple with a baby who were on my flight. They seem confident.”

“Just ask for directions,” he pleads.

“I don’t think the baby can talk yet,” Mingyu says, and then tentative, perhaps reading: “Oh! Train? Metro Rail?”

Jihoon perks up, chin craned, and then laughs mostly because he might implode if he doesn't shake all this energy out, forcing his feet back on the ground. “Yeah! You're close.”

“Okay, I'm hanging up, it'll build suspense,” Mingyu says, and before Jihoon can get out a fully formed _shut up_ –Mingyu really does hang up on him.

He tucks his phone in his pocket and rises up on his toes again, already impatient, breathing through his nose like he's practiced. It must be working: he only feels a little bit like he’s about to drop dead. It takes a few minutes, but Mingyu happens to be slightly taller than most of the crowd around him when he finally comes into view. With a stellar case of 11-hour bedhead and roller suitcase in his grip, duffel hanging off a shoulder, his head snaps up in the direction of Jihoon’s voice when he calls. 

There's something about the understated joy splashed across Mingyu's features, even through the exhaustion, that makes a breath catch in Jihoon’s chest. He realizes he’s grinning, and it’s too big, bright enough to burst, so he drops his hand and crosses his arms across his chest to stop himself from doing something ridiculous, like run. 

Mingyu doesn’t care half as much. 

He catches up to Jihoon and doesn’t stop; despite the crowd, he lets go of his suitcase and drops his bag to scoop Jihoon up in a hug in one, smooth movement. Jihoon is lifted off his feet and it’s so endearingly unreserved that Jihoon can’t do anything but wrap his arms around Mingyu’s neck and laugh, quiet, for him.

Mingyu makes a noise then–hushed, pleased–and when he sets Jihoon down and promptly kisses him, Jihoon is overwhelmed by it all–by this towering, beautiful man who always walks towards him with purpose. All of the terrible, silly things that have been running themselves ragged in Jihoon’s head for weeks now finally manage to shut the fuck up, if only for a moment. An unwitting smile darts across his mouth and, embarrassed by his own feelings, Jihoon covers his face with his hands and attempts not to wail.

“Sorry,” Mingyu says, breathless, hefting his duffel back onto his shoulder. “I got too excited. I missed you.”

Jihoon's hands are tugged away from his eyes, and then Mingyu's right there, bent over and beaming at him, snaggletooth caught like usual. That _stupid smile_ is still pulling at Jihoon's mouth, he can _feel_ it, and he knits his brows together, valiantly attempting a frown.

Mingyu laughs. He chucks Jihoon gently under the chin with crooked fingers. “You look so annoyed,” he teases, straightening, and Jihoon gives up, tugging on Mingyu's shirt so he can bury his face against his chest. He _is_ annoyed. “Was that okay?”

“ _Yes_ , it's okay,” Jihoon mumbles, exasperated, grasping soft cotton between anxious fingers. 

“It's always okay.”

* * *

Except. Maybe it isn’t. Because they’ve been together for an hour so now and Jihoon is convinced they’ve forgotten how to touch. Or look at each other for more than a second. Jihoon isn’t sure what happened, only knows the moment they separated he became (much like the one time Amber convinced him to try an edible she got from the kind granny next door with glaucoma and an entrepreneurial grandson) _so acutely aware_ of an infinite number of things at once but mostly–

His body, Mingyu’s body, gentle in the way they pushpull out of each other’s orbits like circling magnets. Maybe it’s because he’s never been big about public displays of affection so everything is already foreign, but here he is, on a bus smelling vaguely of sweat and various holiday foods, staring at Mingyu’s chest where it keeps knocking into his nose, and he’s dying, _maybe_ , probably–

His cheeks run red, and he is _dying_ , okay, because he wants Mingyu to put his chin on his head. Like, more than he’s ever wanted anything else in his life, ever, except maybe for Mingyu to also hold his hand. The thought of it–if it ever got out, Jeonghan would literally _never_ stop making fun of him–

The bus lurches; Jihoon meets Mingyu’s clavicle face-first. Even though it’s early morning, it’s packed, and Mingyu can’t move much, so Jihoon takes another tiptoed step backward. He leans against the side of the car only for Mingyu to sway towards him. Jihoon inhales in what seems like relief, his cup finally spilling over, and it’s one of those weird, invisible lines you’re constantly waiting for the other person to cross. _Oh, right_ , you say when they do, _I remember how this song goes now._

“Sorry,” Mingyu says, though it’s mostly through a laugh. 

Jihoon is a fucking goner. He digs his chin in at the center of Mingyu’s chest and smiles; it's all eye crinkles, and in response, Mingyu’s own eyes widen before he laughs, a sweet endearment to it. He asks, “You had plans, even today?” 

“Mhm,” Jihoon says. He’s still smiling, muted now, clutching the strap of Mingyu’s duffle bag in both hands, leaning the weight of his top half onto Mingyu's chest via his chin.

“What if,” Mingyu whispers conspiratorially, leaning down, “we did none of that, and ordered food and stayed in instead?”

“We don’t need to see the sun at _all_ this whole trip,” Jihoon says, prompt, switching the duffle to one hand so he can snake an arm around Mingyu’s middle. He’s warm, but not oppressively so, and Jihoon rests his cheek against his left pec, a drumline going off in his ear.

“Well, maybe a little sun,” Mingyu suggests. 

“Okay, fine,” Jihoon sighs. “But only because you asked nicely.”

They lapse into silence most of the way. Jihoon is too flustered to hold a conversation not about, whatever, digital mixing consoles he has his eye on, or the black cat that lives behind the alley of his apartment that he feeds sometimes; Mingyu is too sleepy from the flight to feign interest in the world around him. By the time the doors finally slide open for their stop, Jihoon is practically dragging him off the bus. When they finally get to his place, Mingyu showers, and within minutes of his head touching the pillow, he’s passed out in JIhoon’s bed.

They stay like that well into the afternoon. Jihoon doesn't have the heart to wake him up and either way–he likes this feeling of Mingyu with him, had forgotten the best parts of it somehow: Mingyu's back against his chest, or his shoulder under Jihoon's cheek, rising and falling with every breath.

By one, Jihoon is too wired to join him. So instead he shifts until they're on separate pillows and studies; the sun continues to rise in the sky, streaming through the slats of his blinds, throwing light across the bed, the space between them, Mingyu’s face. It’s undemanding, like this, to lean in across the pillows until their noses are close to touching. He presses the pads of his fingertips to Mingyu’s bottom lip, and he bites back a smile when Mingyu, without opening his eyes, reaches up to hold his hand.

“I am...awake now. I think.” 

Groaning, he stretches out and pulls Jihoon closer in the next movement to snuggle into his side with an arm slung across his waist. His hand runs with no particular purpose across Jihoon’s chest. It catches, and Jihoon starts, almost imperceptible, still unused to the feeling. Bleary-eyed, Mingyu's brows knit together and he struggles to lift his head, staring at the shirt Jihoon's got on. He touches Jihoon's pec again with the palm of his hand this time, gently pressing in, and his eyes widen a fraction when Jihoon clamps his fingers around Mingyu's forearm.

He says, “Uh...surprise?”

Mingyu makes a strangled, cut off sound in his throat. He looks wide awake now and also like he isn't sure if he's still dreaming. “You,” he starts, and then stops. Cocks his head. “You?”

“Hao convinced me last month,” Jihoon says.

Mingyu makes the noise again, louder this time. Baffled, he asks, “You talk to him that often? He convinced you to _pierce your nipple from South Korea_?”

“He said he knew this woman–”

“In _LA_?” Mingyu squints. “Has he seen it?”

“Yeah, I sent a photo.”

Mingyu makes the loudest noise of all and slumps onto the bed, next to Jihoon; Jihoon blinks. “Are you okay?”

“I don't know, I just woke up, I think I’m imploding,” Mingyu sighs, resigned. “I think maybe I'm slowly being engulfed in flames.”

Jihoon raises an eyebrow. 

“Take off your shirt.”

Jihoon raises both eyebrows.

“Please, I guess,” Mingyu tacks on.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he sits up expectantly the same time Jihoon, amused, shifts enough to tug his shirt off and fling it onto the floor before leaning back on his elbows, staring up at Mingyu, who shifts to straddle a thigh, frowning. “Are you sure I can't touch it?”

“It takes forever to heal. Sometimes six months.”

He looks so sleepy and _sad_ that Jihoon lies back and says, hands covering his face. “...I mean...I guess touching it isn't any different from me taking care of it, but it’d have to be really, _really_ light because it hasn't been that long and sometimes I accidentally hit it and _I_ feel like I'm dy– _ing_.”

The last word splinters on a gasp, his head tipping back against the pillow, Mingyu’s mouth suddenly hovering over his pec. “That’s okay,” he murmurs, and Jihoon can feel his breath in warm, little puffs. “I won’t touch it.”

Goosebumps dot along his arms and he shivers; he can't tell if it feels this good because of the piercing or because it's Mingyu. “This,” he says, a hand clutched to Mingyu’s shoulder, grip tightening by the second, “this was a terrible idea.”

Mingyu hums in agreement, thumb brushing Jihoon’s _other_ nipple. He sounds dazed when he says, “I can’t believe he saw it before I did.”

“Are you jealous?” Jihoon teases, knowing he isn't, laughing when Mingyu snorts derisively. “I told him I’d go with him next time I was back so he could get his tongue pierced.”

When Mingyu's head shoots up at that, pained, Jihoon laughs again, louder, brighter. “Your _face_.”

“Well, you can’t just say things like that!”

“Does the thought of your best friend and your hyung getting body piercings together turn you on,” he says, still half-laughing, though it trails off when Mingyu starts to look cagey. Jihoon's tongue pokes at the corner of his mouth, and he smiles. “Are you picturing something dirty?”

Mingyu avoids his eye. "No."

“Yes, you are!" 

In a single fluid motion, he sits up, turns, and gently pushes Mingyu down onto the bed. He settles on his knees, Mingyu's thighs bracketing his hips. Jihoon holds him by the waist, fabric of his shirt bunching, and leans in closer. “He told me he was getting his tongue pierced next because he was bored, but I think it's because he wants to make everyone's wires short circuit.”

“He does enjoy doing that, even unintentionally,” Mingyu says weakly. His hands fist the tangled bedding on either side, clench and release, an antsy movement to his hips, waiting. It's been a long time. His eyes are closed.

Jihoon digs his knees further up the bed, pushing against Mingyu’s sweatpants-clad thighs. He drags a heavy hand to the back of one, testing the give, splaying it out wider. Mingyu swallows hard underneath him. 

“I, however, am _always_ intentional,” he says quietly, placing a hand next to Mingyu's shoulder. Closer now: “Are _your_ wires short circuiting?”

“I need less hot friends to hook up with,” Mingyu says, plaintive.

Jihoon snorts. “I think we are somewhere definitively in the more-than-friends area.”

Somehow, Mingyu manages to make the way his eyes crack open at that sound sarcastic. “Well, I didn't want to say ‘boyfriend’ and watch you shrink into yourself like you’re trying to disappear. What else am I supposed to call seeing someone I've only met in person two separate times who isn't sleeping with anyone except me and also likes me?”

“I don't know, living in your twenties in the 21st century?” Jihoon guesses. “You have too many clothes on.”

Mingyu lifts his chin, eyes scanning down the length of Jihoon and back up again. “So do something about it,” he says.

Head lolling onto his shoulder for a moment, Jihoon inhales, pushing the hem of Mingyu's shirt up lazily with both hands before stopping somewhere around his middle, overtaken by a thought. “You know I missed _you_ , right? I mean, this, yeah, but just–getting. You. In real time.”

The corners of Mingyu's mouth quirk up. “Yeah.”

“And you still want to leave the room eventually? There is a sort of party with all the people who didn’t go see their families this weekend.”

“Don't know, depends how good the next part is,” Mingyu says, and Jihoon responding laugh shoots off like a firework. 

“Indoors all weekend it is.”

* * *

* * *

They end up on the beach the Friday of his birthday, the most direct shot from Jihoon’s apartment, shivering in thin hoodies, pleasantly full and tipsy from dinner, drinks and Netflix in front of Jihoon’s laptop. Jihoon is sitting cross-legged atop the ramp of a lifeguard station, watching Mingyu far ahead of him.

There are more than a few people milling around here and there, even though its late, but Mingyu is alone for the moment, staring out into the water for a long while. Over his shoulder and the sound of the waves, he tosses out, “Do you think there are sea monsters in there?”

“If there are, you're yelling right in front of their houses.” Jihoon shakes his head. “So fucking rude.”

Gaze back on the water, Mingyu says, “Maybe I can feed you to one of them.”

After a moment, he shrugs, and kicks at the sand before picking up into a trot. Jihoon pulls his phone out, taking burst shots of blurry Mingyu, laughing out of breath Mingyu, Mingyu right in front of him with his hood up, the motion sensor light from the tower splashing a glow across his cheekbones. He holds a peace sign up to his face; Jihoon snaps a final photo and tucks his phone into his pocket.

“I talked to them," Mingyu informs him. "They're not interested, said you'd taste too bitter."

“I like when you're mean to me,” Jihoon says, taking the hand Mingyu offers him to pull him up off the ramp and into the sand. “It's so unexpected and attractive.”

“Have to keep you entertained somehow." Mingyu fiddles with his fringe. “I like your hair this color.”

“We _just_ went over this,” Jihoon laments.

“Don't think you look hot or want to kiss you at _all_ ,” Mingyu says, twisting a gathered up strand around his finger, tug and release. “Gross.”

“Honestly, this whole conversation is gross,” Jihoon murmurs, letting his eyes fall shut.

It's only when Mingyu's mouth brushes against his and their smiles crackle in the air between them that Mingyu says, “I respect the dedication to your brand.” He kisses Jihoon once more, then tips his head back to ask, “So, good birthday?”

Jihoon didn't do a single thing today but make a trip to the convenience store near his place for overpriced beer and a box of condoms, unless you count answering the door for take out. He licks his lips and smiles, can't really force himself to look anywhere near Mingyu's direction. 

“Oh, it was one of the best,” he says, and peeks, and then groans. “Stop it! Don't look at me like that.”

His half-hearted attempt to shove Mingyu ends with him clutching ineffectually at Mingyu’s sleeves, slumping against him. With a voice like a secret, Mingyu chuckles as he says, “This is just who I am.”

Jihoon digs his fingers in with a sigh. “Quit finding my sincerity endearing.”

“I'll do what I want.” 

Mingyu nudges him with a shoulder until he pushes himself straight once more. They look at one another; Mingyu makes a noise, sweet and under his breath. 

“What?” Jihoon asks, bewildered, but Mingyu shakes his head in return. “... _What_?”

“You wanna be my boyfriend,” Mingyu says, grinning, hands reaching up to wrap around Jihoon’s wrists. 

Belied by the smile he is trying so obviously hard to tamp down, Jihoon rolls his eyes, canting his head quick to the side as he looks away. In response, a delighted Mingyu tosses his head back and laughs. He chases Jihoon after, a hand on his jaw, an off-center kiss aimed somewhere near a dimple. 

“You want to be my boyfriend so _bad_ ,” he tells the space beneath Jihoon’s ear, and Jihoon scoffs, desperate to bury the giddiness in his chest. 

“You write a couple social media posts about a guy.” The wind picks up around them; he shivers and plucks Mingyu’s hoodie. “I’m cold. Give me this and maybe I’ll agree to it.”

There’s a pause. Mingyu stares, mouth twitching, a smile threatening to spill over any second. Eyes on Jihoon, he pushes the hood back and unzips the hoodie to shrug out of it. It's while marveling at how _warm_ Mingyu is, all the time, that Jihoon is bombarded with his cologne when the hoodie drapes around him. Jihoon cocoons himself in it, limbs floppy as he lets Mingyu carefully shove his arms in. He pulls Jihoon’s hood up first, and then his own, before tying both tight under Jihoon’s chin.

Mingyu says, “So?”

“I think we can work something out,” Jihoon whispers back.

* * *

* * *

They do visit his studio later, and it’s even more of a private moment than being naked in front of him, somehow. Where Mingyu's sat in Jihoon’s chair, looking up at him, hands tucked between his knees, so at home that for the briefest of moments Jihoon thinks they must have been here before. 

He shivers, mouth pulling down, and Mingyu yanks on the hem of his shirt. “Are you having awful, no-good romantic thoughts again? I know you hate them.”

“No,” Jihoon says darkly, shuffling in closer until he can hook his arms loose around Mingyu’s shoulders; Mingyu’s hands hold onto his hips.

“It’s okay, hyung, I promise I won’t tell. You have a reputation to uphold.”

The apples of Jihoon’s cheeks lift up, up, up, no matter how hard he bites down on his bottom lip. Mingyu stands, so Jihoon’s arms fall. They’re inches apart, Jihoon’s neck craned all the way. 

“You’re going to give me back problems,” he complains, and Mingyu says _well, fine_ and tugs him along until he drops onto the sofa. He hooks a hand around the back of Jihoon’s knee, tugging until Jihoon slowly sinks down, first one knee then the other, planted on either side of Mingyu’s hips.

They settle. Mingyu’s chin is tipped up now, mouth slightly parted, waiting. “One day you’ll think a nice thought and not immediately want to throw a smoke bomb down to escape.”

“Oh, a boy can dream,” Jihoon drawls, combing his fingers through the hair at the nape of Mingyu’s neck. 

“Tell me what it was,” Mingyu says in a low voice, mouth brushing Jihoon’s when he speaks. 

“You saw the Haikyuu figures and bought me a premium CrunchyRoll account,” Jihoon tells him, and muffles Mingyu’s laugh with a kiss. 

(By the time they stumble out, drunk on the heady feeling of having so much to touch so suddenly, all the time, Jihoon knows he’ll never be able to sit on the sofa with a straight face again, but it seems worth it for the way Mingyu looked in the dim cast of the LED strip lights Jihoon had hung around the room months ago: eerie and faded, beautiful, his, for now.)

* * *

There’s only one thing they actually have to do that weekend, and it’s the surprise architectural tour Jihoon already paid for. He doesn’t tell Mingyu where they’re going, but he figures it out fairly quick once they arrive. He ducks his head and aims a soft smile at his shoes when the guide informs their group they’ll be starting the Frank Lloyd Wright tour soon. 

He translates next to Mingyu, and as the small group makes their way to the van out front, Jihoon feels a tug on his shirt, holding him back. “Just his work?” Mingyu whispers when he turns around. “Really, just his?”

“It was between this and Frank Gehry, and I know you want to focus on sustainable planning, and I looked up the other guy and it had all this stuff about the environment and ‘organic architecture’–please stop looking at me like that,” he laughs, squeezing his eyes shut as he darts away from Mingyu, “ahh, I swear it was only one night of planning, a couple hours at most!”

Mingyu catches him with arms around his shoulders, smearing a playful, clumsy kiss high across Jihoon’s cheekbone. “You want everyone to think you’re mean and it’s hilarious.”

Jihoon curls his lip as they cross the threshold outside. “I _am_ mean.”

“Planning architecture tours sounds exactly like something a bad boyfriend would do.”

“Well, I’m practicing,” Jihoon says, careful, not bothering to hide his grin when Mingyu laughs and reaches for his hand to tug him towards the open van door.

* * *

They don’t bother listening to the guide; she’s perfectly capable, Jihoon is sure, but it’s so much nicer to lean into Mingyu instead and listen to him talk about the structures every time they make a stop. 

His eyes are lit up, and Jihoon isn’t even looking at the buildings when Mingyu tells him Gehry and Wright are iconic here– _here_ , as in this whole country–and people flock to see these buildings, homes, performance spaces. It’s his personal dream to visit architectural phenomena in every country he can; it’s his personal dream to be the kind of person who creates something that lasts. 

Their last stop is at the Griffith Observatory, overlooking miles of land and thousands of tiny homes dotted along the hills. The guide points out three in particular, but Jihoon and Mingyu hang off to the side, near the ledge. 

“Looks like it’s sprouting up from the ground right?” Mingyu asks in a bright voice. “Like it just showed up one day, a fully formed extension of the dirt around it.”

“Oh, no,” Jihoon says aloud. “Are you always this poetic when you talk about architecture?”

“I want to make something,” Mingyu continues, earnest. “Not just my dream house, or what I think your studio looks like–”

“You know now! Draw me an update–”

“I want,” Mingyu laughs, “I want to point it out and know I did it.”

“Yeah.” Jihoon taps his fingers against the railing, leaning over it momentarily to peer out. “Making something out of nothing. Making something out of the thoughts in your head.”

Mingyu doesn’t say anything for a moment; Jihoon looks up, in question. “Have you written anything lately? For you?”

Jihoon lifts a shoulder. “I’m always writing.”

“You never write when I’m around.”

Jihoon wants to say: that’s because when you’re around, it all comes out too fast to keep up with. But he doesn’t. “Photographic memory,” he offers as a joke instead, turning so he can plant his elbows on the ledge. “I’m gonna write a song about this, right here.”

“Oh, are you?” Mingyu is amused. “Isn’t it _your_ birthday weekend, hyung? I feel like I came here empty-handed at this point.”

Jihoon hooks a finger through one of Mingyu’s belt loops, pulls until Mingyu takes a step towards him. He’s smiling soft in the sunlight. Jihoon has no idea if their group is even with them still.

“You didn’t,” he says, faint but there. “I promise.”

* * *

* * *

They strike a deal, in the end: they won’t go with each other to the airport. Mostly because Mingyu knows Jihoon would rather gnaw his limbs off than have some melodramatic airport scene every time they leave each other. But also: because it won't seem as hard if they say goodbye while half asleep. It's possible to pretend, if just for a few hours or minutes or _moments_ , that Mingyu is getting up for work. That he's going to make some breakfast. That he's got a call to take, and then will crawl right back into bed with cold feet an hour later.

In the moments of inbetween, they can act like this is just another normal day. (They are both cautiously optimistic that this will hurt less in the long run.) 

So for now, they exist here: Jihoon sitting in bed–sitting in Mingyu's lap again, to be more accurate, arms hooked around his neck. His morning breath is stale, but Mingyu can’t do much more than clutch the back of his oversized shirt by the fistful and hold on tighter as they kiss lazily. It’s 4:45 in the morning; Jihoon is nothing but a pile of heavy limbs and yawns.

And then surprisingly, a noise not from Mingyu. They part, Jihoon exhaling soft, lips pressed together, almost–a whimper. He buries his head in the next second, a self-deprecating laugh hidden in the crook of Mingyu's shoulder.

"I'm tired," is all he says, and Mingyu smiles. Jihoon scrubs his face with a palm, an elbow on Mingyu's shoulder now. “This is embarrassing."

Mingyu darts a kiss to a knuckle. “ _You’re_ the embarrassing one, I’m having a great time.”

“Thanks.”

Mingyu just does what he know will win: tips his chin up, shuts his eyes, and waits. Soft, surprisingly large hands are gentle as they cup his cheeks, and Jihoon drops a kiss to his mouth. He climbs out of Mingyu’s lap and drapes himself across the bed, cheeks a bit flushed.

“A present is waiting for you on your phone but you have to promise to wait to check it until you're gone,” he tells Mingyu, and the possibilities, knowing Jihoon and the kind of people he's friends with, are endless. Is it a song planted in Mingyu's phone while he was sleeping (a dream, honestly)? Nudes? An elaborate prank where all the contacts in Mingyu's phone were changed to “Mingus” which may or may not have been done before? _Nudes?_

When Mingyu gets to the airport, he huddles off to the side with his luggage and connects to the wifi. He sorts through a few days' worth of a mostly-ignored life, but only one thing on Instagram grabs Mingyu’s attention, settled right at the top of a week’s worth of notifications: **jihoonieversefactory started following you**.

He texts Jihoon _wow I like u_ and only has to wait a few minutes for a response.

_Ahhh, weird, me too 😜_

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second Mingyu leaves, Jihoon always wants him back. He knows this is how it is, that this is all he gets right now: texts over wifi and stray 4am Instagram comments while one of them is sleeping or busy, choppy voice calls and an ocean’s worth of time difference between them. He should be grateful, maybe, that he lives _when_ he does. That they can be together, even when they aren’t. But it eats away at him, too. 
> 
> It’s self-infliction at its finest: Kim Mingyu is always one unlocked screen from him, sure–and it is always just enough to remind Jihoon of what he has, and what he is perpetually too far away to hold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've read this over so many times it has stopped seeming like real words 😬😬😬 OH NO 😬😬😬. If you catch anything particularly egregious, let me know–a lot of this was edited in the throes of a very severe cold lmao. Hope it, uh, is adequate. 🤧 I'm nervous!!! Also, it was Mingyu’s pov at the tail end of part 2, and at the start of this one, but this is the only time that happens!
> 
> Okay, okay, I'm done. As always: you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ljhmyg) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/ljhmyg).

Somehow, even with Jihoon not around, Mingyu slots into his friends’ lives easily. It helps that Soonyoung is the human equivalent of an overly excited puppy whose new owner (Seungcheol) is constantly going _oh no! sorry about this!_ as their leashes tangle together–Mingyu couldn’t avoid hanging out with them even if he wanted to. 

Right now, he’s sitting in between Minghao and Soonyoung in a crowded bar, Soonyoung launched halfway across the table as he drunkenly tries to convince Seungcheol to come with him when he visits Jihoon in a couple weeks. 

Rephrase: Soonyoung is trying to _guilt trip_ Seungcheol into coming. 

“I know you have money saved up!”

Seungcheol covers his face with his hands. “I don’t think you understand what being on call means.”

“Can’t someone else save lives those days?!”

Mingyu blinks and looks at Seungcheol, who rolls his eyes in a way that is somehow both bashful and proud. “Paramedic,” he says, pushing out his chair, and Mingyu nods. Right. “I’m going to get Soonyoung-ah some water. Please hide his phone so he doesn’t buy a plane ticket while I’m gone.”

“I’ll steal your wallet so quick.” Soonyoung narrows his eyes and turns to continue to argue with Seungcheol’s receding figure; quick as anything, Minghao reaches over and takes his phone, slipping it into his pocket. Soonyoung settles back into his chair with a glum sigh. “Nevermind, he’s too far away to yell at and too responsible to convince.”

“But what _will_ he attempt next,” Minghao says behind his glass. Soonyoung sits up straighter. 

“Mingyu-ya! I bet you could guilt trip him into going.”

“I don’t want to guilt trip anyone,” Mingyu says, looking down at his phone as it buzzes. It’s Jihoon– _can I ft you_ –and Mingyu checks his world clock. It’s 6am there, barely. 

“Is that Jihoonie-ah? TELL _HIM_ TO GUILT TRIP–”

Seungcheol’s hand gently claps over his mouth. “Drink your water now,” he says, handing over a glass. “Stop yelling. Please.” 

“I will do both,” Soonyoung says primly once he's free, grabbing the glass with both hands. “But only because you were nice.”

Mingyu’s in the middle of composing a response when his Facetime goes off anyway, and he answers it out of habit.

“Hey.” Jihoon is in the dark, in his studio, and he looks tired as his eyes flit around to take in Mingyu’s background. “Fuck, I’ll call back later–”

“No, don’t.” Mingyu stands, grabbing his coat, and his friends follow the movement. “I’m gonna,” he jerks his head towards the exit, “be right back.”

He doesn’t bother to check if they’ve heard him. By the time he’s outside, Jihoon’s flipped the light switch, though it might be worse now. There are bags under his eyes and his hair is sticking up oddly on one side, like he’s tugged through it one too many times. 

“Okay,” Mingyu says, struggling to put his coat on one arm at a time. “Outside. I can hear you now.”

“This is stupid,” Jihoon complains, rubbing tiredly at one, red eye. “I know you said you were doing something, I forgot. Just go back in.” 

“I’m where I want to be,” Mingyu tells him, leading against the building. He forgot his gloves on the table, and he’s already paying for it. “What’s going on?”

Jihoon stands on a precipice, almost like he’s holding his breath, and then lets his head fall back. “I can’t fucking figure out the last third of this album and it’s killing me. I might have to delay my due date because none of my older stuff really fits in cohesively enough, even with tinkering with literally,” he looks at Mingyu, “literally twenty of them, and the new stuff–nothing’s. There.”

“What? But you’re constantly writing.”

“I can’t use those,” Jihoon says, pinching the bridge of his nose. When Mingyu asks _why not_ , Jihoon picks his head up finally to meet his eye. 

Evasive, he says, “I just can’t. But I can’t fucking seem to do anything else.”

“Well.” Mingyu’s never written a song before; he’s barely treading water. “I don’t–I’m confused.”

Jihoon’s propped his phone up so it’s in front of his computer; he’s leaning back in his chair, eyes on Mingyu. The album was due by the end of the month, he knows, but Jihoon–this isn’t just finding everything he’s writing or producing incomplete, somehow. 

“What’s wrong?”

Jihoon looks away for a second. "Nothing,” he says with a shrug, brows knit together. He seems frustrated. “I'm tired and I miss you."

Mingyu’s stomach shoots down to his feet and back up again. “That’s not nothing,” is all he says. 

Again, Jihoon shrugs, even more half-hearted than before. Mingyu rests his head against the building facade, breath a brief, hazy cloud of white. “Can I listen? To one of the songs you don’t like?”

“I never said I didn’t like them,” Jihoon says, gentler, somehow. He does reach for his mouse. “I like all of them.”

“Play me one, then.” Mingyu smiles, small and sweet. “Please?”

Warily, with a faint smile in return that fails to stick, Jihoon clicks through a few things, eyes roaming across the screen before he finds what he’s looking for. “This one’s my favorite. Without my guide on it, though.”

Mingyu crouches, huddled in his coat, and listens. Watches, really: Jihoon, not looking at him as he spins back and forth in his chair, fidgeting restlessly. He’s gnawing on the end of a pen, staring off into the distance, when Mingyu says, “I miss you too.”

Jihoon glances at him. 

“I don’t want you to think that I don’t. Or that...because everyone else is here, we don’t need you around.” When he doesn’t get a response, he inclines his head towards the bar. “You know, one of your friends–I won’t say who, but we know who–”

(“Soonyoung,” they both say, because duh,)

“was about to commit credit card fraud to get more people to visit you.”

The smile Jihoon gives him is a twitch, a speck in the grand scheme of things, too tired to hold its place. The song ends. 

“This is...me stuff,” Jihoon says, careful. “My head–it’s a bad day, that’s all.”

“That’s why you call me,” Mingyu tells him. “Have you ever had a bad day with me?”

“I’ve had like, twelve days with you, max.”

“You know what I mean.” He raises both eyebrows. “They were pretty great days. Perfect days, one could say.”

“One could say that,” Jihoon agrees tentatively. And then, so quiet Mingyu almost doesn’t hear him: “I think I’m lonely.” 

“Call Amber-noona! Didn’t you sometimes run together in the mornings? How long have you been there?”

“I don’t know,” Jihoon says, which means too long. “She’ll be up. I guess I can call her.”

Mingyu clutches his phone tighter, shivering in the cold. “I’m sorry I can’t be there.”

“Steal a hyung’s wallet when you get inside,” Jihoon starts. “Buy a ticket flying out tomorrow.” A beat, and they both smile, one more faded than the other. “Okay. Fine. I’ll call her now. You can stop standing in the freezing cold for me.” 

“I’d turn into a popsicle for you,” Mingyu says, and success! Jihoon does, at least, huff out a laugh at that. “Delicious Mingyu Popsicle.” 

“Please shut up,” Jihoon tells him, but he says it like he means _thank you_.

* * *

* * *

The first thing Soonyoung does is make Jihoon go to ikea, for whatever fucking reason Jihoon is unaware of. He finds himself inside of one on a late Friday evening, confused as he watches Soonyoung march confidently across the building. 

“What are you _doing_?”

“Do you have anything you need to buy?”

He throws his arms up. “Soonyoung-ah, you’re the one who wanted to come here!” 

“A wood-inspired desk, maybe,” Soonyoung says, ignoring him, squinting up at a sign for a beat too long before nodding decisively and hooking a left at the next possible turn. “For your writing.”

“Do I look like a delicate young poet penning letters by fucking candlelight,” Jihoon calls after him on quick feet, but Soonyoung has already found a desk. He shouts in triumph, and immediately reaches for the price tag placard.

“See, and it’s only two hundreds dollars.” 

“Do you even know how much that is in won?”

“I know plenty,” Soonyoung says, waving a hand. “Anyway, I read that this place sells meatballs, and if you bring your receipt to the checkout they take the meatball price off the total.”

Jihoon shakes his head. "So?"

He opens a drawer to inspect the inside. “Isn’t that funny? It’s like it’s free!”

“It is _not_ like it’s free,” Jihoon says. “It’s like trying to pay for a desk I don’t even want entirely with meatballs.”

Soonyoung’s head snaps up; Jihoon points, and he _means_ it. “That isn’t a challenge.”

“Sure,” Soonyoung says, distracted, looking around wildly before darting off in a random direction. “Unrelated, where can I find these meatballs?”

“It wasn’t a challenge!”

* * *

Soonyoung books a class at a dance studio the next day and forces Jihoon to come with. Or–force is a strong word. Jihoon, despite eternally mounting evidence to the contrary, does like being active–he misses baseball most of all, honestly–but fucking around with Soonyoung in a studio has always been fun. 

Even when he’s rusty, the steps come to him. Back before he moved, back when they were younger, Soonyoung would drag him out of whatever hidey hole he'd crawled into that week for work or for Being Sad™ so he could get all of his frustration out somewhere else. So he keeps up pretty well now despite not having seen the inside of _this_ particular kind of studio in at least a year and a half. 

He appreciates it–it’s a fun class, the lead is an energetic girl around his height with a shouty voice and an infectious laugh. He goes through the motions when he can’t remember, laughs when he stumbles, once, coming out of a pose at a weird angle, but there’s a vague muscle memory there, and he forgets himself as the hour goes on. 

By the end of the cool down, he’s out of breath and shuttles off to the side as everyone slowly files out, chatting the whole way. Jihoon splashes some water from his bottle onto his face and lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe it off. 

“Nice.”

He peeks over his shirt; Soonyoung’s eyes are on his stomach. 

“I am building new hobbies,” Jihoon says, gingerly dropping to sit on the floor of the studio. Then he decides the best course of action is to lie completely prone and hope for death, so he falls onto his back with starfished limbs splayed out. He’s very aware that there are people hovering in the room, but the schedule has the next class listed thirty minutes from now, so they’re fine. 

He's got his breath mostly under control when Soonyoung says, "How're things with Mingyu?"

"Good." Jihoon closes his eyes. "I think? I don't know."

"Did something happen?"

"Literally no, emotional baggage wise…" Jihoon waves a hand; could go either way on that one. “I just don’t–I don’t get why people do this. It’s exhausting.”

Soonyoung is dripping, but also annoyingly less out of breath. He settles next to Jihoon. “It’s not exhausting, you’ve internalized everything and don’t know how to act like an adult when you’re dating someone.”

“When I finally decide to go to therapy, you will realize,” Jihoon says, and Soonyoung laughs, and smacks him in the chest. 

The laugh dies; his knuckles brush Jihoon’s shirt, dragging the fabric. “Hey. I’m serious. It isn’t. Not–”

“If you say ‘not when you find the right person,’ I am going to put you into a chokehold.”

“Do it anyway, it’s hot,” Soonyoung volleys, and Jihoon chokes on his spit when he laughs in surprise. “Look at it this way: why does being close to someone else scare you?”

With a worn-out exhale, Jihoon rolls over to push himself up. “Why are you this way, I’m _leaving_ –”

Soonyoung yanks him back down by the wrist and Jihoon squawks indignantly; somehow in the ensuing battle they end up with their legs tangled, Soonyoung’s cheek squished against his shoulder. In the row of mirrors to their left, he looks younger, eyes closed, cheeks flushed. He doesn’t say anything, and doesn’t say anything, and _doesn’t say anything_ , so Jihoon grits his teeth and finally answers: 

“I overthink everything. Including whether or not they actually want to be with me.”

“Okay. Well. You don't have to think with us,” Soonyoung starts. “With me and Seungcheol-hyung, I mean.”

“I don't,” Jihoon agrees. 

He digs his chin in. “So when'd you stop?”

“Stop...thinking so much?”

“Yeah.”

Jihoon fiddles with the string of his pants. It's hard to say. Seungcheol is wound around him like a vine; their roots go all the way back, way before Jihoon ever picked up a pen and paper to put music to the lyrics in his head. Soonyoung showed up one day at school, eager and positive and _alive_ , and wouldn't shut up until Jihoon had no choice but to stick with him, too. They’ve done everything together the past handful of years; Seungcheol for even longer. He’d never be able to point out one experience in particular that cemented them in each other’s lives.

He lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know. When I knew you wouldn't leave me.” 

He laughs, short and humorless. “But that's–it's a lot easier to think that about a friend than it is someone you're in love with.”

A pause, then Soonyoung picks his head up. “Are you saying you’re–”

“No,” Jihoon interrupts, sitting up with him, too quick. He shakes his head. “I–you remember Daniel?”

In an odd display for him, Soonyoung looks very much like he wants to roll his eyes. “You’re asking me if I remember the reason for the maybe _third_ time I’ve seen you cry?”

“ _He_ didn’t make me cry. It wasn’t even crying, I was teary-eyed at _most_ –”

“Yeah, we get it, down with feelings, the people will riot on the streets over Lee Jihoon’s tear ducts. What about him?”

“I liked him,” Jihoon tells the floor. “It felt–sometimes it felt like,” he didn’t even tell Soonyoung this the first time around, and he can’t stop the way his ears heat up, “it felt like–a hint. Like it could be something. I don't think any guy ever came close, before that, but...I did the same thing I always do. It's like–”

Jihoon laughs again, and maybe it does sound a bit shaky now, but Soonyoung doesn't comment. “My brain never shuts off. Instead, it keep this running list of all the ways it's possible to fuck something up beyond repair.”

He pulls his shirt away from his chest and fans it once, twice, looking off to the side as the last stragglers leave. It’s just the two of them now. “Breaking up with him because I was leaving was a really convenient excuse. Because–I don’t know. It would’ve ended anyway. I can’t be the person someone needs me to be. So it’s easier to leave first. Or not try to begin with.”

When Soonyoung doesn’t respond right away, Jihoon looks at him. Then he says flatly, almost bored, “That’s a cop out. And it's not even a good one.”

Jihoon opens his mouth to argue, maybe, but Soonyoung beats him to it, soft confusion drenching his words: 

“I don't know why you think you're so broken.”

“I don't think that,” Jihoon says weakly, and Soonyoung arches a single, annoying brow. 

“Did you ever even talk to _Daniel_ about any of this? Because if I hadn’t been around when you _weren’t crying_ , I would’ve assumed you two were just...semi-regularly eating dinner together for a few weeks like everyone else did.” 

Jihoon is uncomfortable, suddenly every inch aware of the oppressive patches of sweat sticking the damp fabric of his shirt to his skin. He frowns down at the floor, and Soonyoung snorts and shakes his head. 

“See? Cop out. You’re so annoying.”

“I am not _annoying_!”

“Yah!” Soonyoung flaps a hand at him and pushes into a stand. “Yes, you are. You _adore_ Mingyu, get over it.”

He holds out a hand to help Jihoon up, and Jihoon takes it, then proceeds to shove him in annoyance. “Don’t put words in my mouth; I never said I didn’t.”

With an air of desperation, Soonyoung growls, his hands curling into fists in front of him. “So, what’s the _problem_? You like him, and he still lives in a different country? Big deal, it's 2019. You don’t know what you’re doing? Who does. You’re afraid it’s going somewhere and you don’t want him to leave you?”

Soonyong hesitates, eyes darting off to the right and back again. “Okay, that one you might actually need to talk about. But your whole life is writing about stuff like this; you say you don't understand it, but you do. Because it’s not hard, Jihoon-ah. Why is real life any different from the music you make?” 

"Nevermind, forget I brought it up,” Jihoon snaps, pushing his hair off his forehead. And, even sharper as he hauls the strap of his duffle over his head: “Don’t tell Seungcheol-hyung.”

Soonyoung throws his hands up. “Of _course_ I’m going to tell him, he’s my best friend, too. And he’s going to tell you the exact same thing I am.”

Jihoon’s steps halt on the way towards the exit. “Which is?”

“I have no idea how things are going to end. No one ever does. But at some point you have to stop treating your relationship like there’s an expiration date to it.” He shrugs, grabbing his own bag and following Jihoon’s path. “If you act like it ending is inevitable, then it's already over, right?”

There’s a pause. 

“I don’t like when you sound mature and thoughtful.”

Soonyoung sticks out his tongue like he’s tasted something bitter. “Yeah, me either. I can’t believe you’ve forced me to do this.”

He hesitates, and then slings an arm around Jihoon’s shoulders, a determined scrunch to his nose. Jihoon doesn’t bother shrugging him off; he must be tired, or desperate, because he even leans into it. Traitor body. 

“I do _really_ like him, Youngie-ah” he mumbles, though it feels a bit pathetic to say out loud.

“Let’s get drunk and you can tell me everything you miss about Kim Mingyu, babe,” Soonyoung says. “I bet it’s lots of things. Do you miss holding his hand? I would, they look like nice hands.” 

He’s teasing now, and looks accomplished when Jihoon laughs at that, brows knitting together. “You know what's funny? I don't think I ever even held his hand the entire time I was there. Not until he came here to visit.”

“That's a shame. Hand holding is my third favorite activity. Do you want to hold mine?”

“No.”

Soonyoung frowns. 

“You never do anything fun.”

* * *

True to form, Soonyoung must blab to Seungcheol the second his plane lands. Roughly fourteen or so hours after Jihoon hops off the bus after dropping Soonyoung off at the airport, his phone blares. For the briefest of moments, Jihoon contemplates not answering. But he knows Choi Seungcheol, and he also knows Choi Seungcheol will keep calling him right up until his phone dies, and then he’ll charge it to 100% and start all over again.

Jihoon is at the studio, mostly so he won’t be home alone and forced to think, and he hits pause on the track he’s been working on to answer the Facetime. Seungcheol doesn’t even bother to say hello: 

“I have this gut feeling that if anyone ever said something sincere to you about Mingyu in person, you would run away.”

“Hyung, I can still hang up,” Jihoon counters, rising from his chair to flop onto the sofa instead, combing his hair back. 

“You can,” Soonyoung agrees, popping up from the corner of the frame, grinning wide. They’re home by now, settled on Soonyoung’s bed, it looks like. “But you won’t.” 

“You had your turn already, go away,” Jihoon tells him, tucking an arm under his head. Soonyoung makes a face and goes back to his own phone. To Seungcheol, he adds: “I assume there’s an argument laid out.”

“I may have a few counterpoints, yeah,” Seungcheol says. Jihoon rolls out the hand with the phone in it: get on with it, then. “The first of which being that you underestimate yourself. I think sometimes that’s all you do.”

“Thanks,” Jihoon bites, eyes raised to the ceiling. “Next bullet point?”

“I wish you gave yourself more credit and let yourself have something.” He's so earnest. Jihoon looks at him for a second, and pulls his bottom lip in. 

“You have this chip on your shoulder, like you've convinced yourself that you don't deserve to be happy the way people like Jeonghan and Jisoo are happy.” Soonyoung’s head is on his shoulder now too, phone abandoned, eyes on Jihoon, and it’s almost–it’s almost too much. “And I know it’s not the same, but you _are_ loved, Jihoon-ah.” 

Seungcheol smiles, and it's small but it's there. 

“Maybe even by Mingyu, if you let him.”

* * *

An hour before the New Year, Jihoon gets a call in the middle of taking a shot. He perks up when he sees Jisoo’s name and answers almost immediately, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his sweater. “Hold on, I’m going to the bathroom,” he shouts, and weaves his way between a drunken mishmash of people dancing and kissing and smoking. 

Mercifully, the bathroom is free, and when the door clicks shut with his back to it, he exhales and finally takes the screen in. Jisoo’s eyelashes are a bit wet, and Jihoon thinks _wait_ and then, in one thousand point font splashed across a lit-up marquee across the inside of his head: _**oh**_.

Still, he plays along. 

“Hyung, I’m at a party.” 

“This is more important,” Jisoo says.

“You look like you’ve been crying.”

“In a good way, in a good way,” he waves a hand. “Actually, this is from me laughing, that’s why I called you.”

“Mm?”

Jisoo turns his phone, where Jeonghan has both hands covering his face. “I just wanted breakfast!” he wails, but he’s laughing. “Jihoon-ah, hang up! Don’t look at me like this!”

Jisoo turns the phone back on himself. He’s smiling; Jihoon is too, sitting on the edge of the tub. “He tried to make fun of me this morning and ended up crying instead.”

“And why is hyung crying?”

“Because he said ‘if you don’t make me my favorite breakfast, I won’t marry you, ha ha ha,’ and then got upset like, two seconds later and now he's been crying on and off for hours."

“I”m not _upset_ ,” Jeonghan says in a thick voice, his head flat on the table. “I’m _happy_. I realized it wasn’t a joke anymore!”

“It was never a joke, baby,” Jisoo says, but he sounds the way he always does when he talks to Jeonghan, equal parts adoring and exasperated. 

With an obnoxious sniff, Jeonghan wipes his face and lifts his head. “It’s a really nice thought and I like thinking it. We’re getting married and Shua-ya is letting me get a cat next month.”

A blur, and then Jisoo pops back into frame, sounding solemn: 

“He’s had a long day, emotionally.”

“It’s what he deserves,” Jihoon says, only a little mean, and Jeonghan’s responding laugh is wet, buried into the folds of his arms. 

“It is,” Jisoo says with a nod, gaze on Jeonghan. It flicks back to Jihoon. “I’ll let you go now, I promise. I just needed someone else to see this.”

Jihoon asks, “Who else knows?” and Jisoo understands what he means immediately: 

“My mom, his parents. Seungcheol was on call last night, so he’s dead to the world.”

“Nice, I win.”

Jisoo rolls his eyes, amused. “It’s not a contest, Jihoon-ah.”

“It isn’t,” Jihoon agrees. “But if it was, I would be winning.”

“Good _bye_ ,” Jisoo laughs, and hangs up on him.

Grinning down at his phone, Jihoon sends him a string of emojis–streamers and balloons, some fireworks, two guys holding hands, a champagne bottle. Jisoo sends him back a photo of he and Jeonghan. It’s old, takes Jihoon a second to place it, but he’s pretty sure it’s from the very first time they met Jisoo in person. Jihoon thinks he might have even taken it. 

_Is it weird to see where you are now?_ Jihoon texts him, and the reply comes in a beat later:

_It’s never weird. Not when you know._

Someone knocks on the door; without looking up, Jihoon yells: “Try again later!”

His phone pings with a notification.

“Stop sexting Mingyu and come dance!” Amber yells back. “It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday there!”

It’s from Jisoo: _You can tell Mingyu, btw. Figured you’d ask._

What?

“I’m not always talking to Mingyu!” 

Amber laughs at him, and Jihoon glares, even though she can’t see. 

“Sorry,” she says, though, so maybe she can. “Must constantly be smiling at something else on your phone then, my bad.”

“Yeah, memes,” Jihoon tells her angrily. “Also one time I watched a baby bat eat a banana for three whole minutes! The internet is endless, noona.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Amber cries out, voice fading as she walks away.

The hum of the party continues on around him, muffled as he sits in a slightly too humid bathroom with his phone clutched in both hands in his lap. He does want to tell Mingyu–he just didn’t exactly realize this until Jisoo told him he _could_. The sad, angry gremlin voice in his head he listens to when he’s depressed leans cooly against the wall and mutters: _well, maybe you_ shouldn’t _tell him then. What do they know?_ which is a stupid thing to think, it’s just. He’s not used to having–

Certainty. 

One person, maybe more than the others, that he wants to go to first. He frowns down at his phone, wrinkles digging their graves between his brows, and uses a hand as leverage to drop slow into the tub behind him. 

Fuck it.

The Facetime he attempts gets rejected; Mingyu messages back _driving_ after a moment, and Jihoon sighs, sinking deeper, knees hung over the edge. He's too drunk for this. His head rests at an awkward angle against the tile on the opposite side, eyes closed, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when something rustles in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. With a start, Jihoon cranes his neck, trying to peer at it without lifting his head, and watches a grey paw take a swipe at the air a moment later, the cabinet door rattling open a pathetic amount.

Jihoon stretches a leg out as far as it’ll go and toes open the cabinet door properly. The cat leaps out, and then onto the edge next to his knees. He readjusts, sitting up awkwardly, pulling his legs back so he’s cross-legged in the tub. 

He puts his phone on the edge and strokes the top of Tuna’s head. “You’d never freak me out,” he says morosely, elbow on the edge, chin in hand. “Right?”

Tuna hops off the edge and goes back into the cabinet to peer at him silently.

“Understandable, thanks for your time,” Jihoon says. His Facetime goes off. He blinks down at his phone in confusion and pokes at it to answer. "Hello?"

"Home,” Mingyu says, trying to divulge himself of his outerwear with one hand while he holds the phone out. “Did you join us here in the future yet? Where’s the rest of your head?”

Smiling lopsided and endeared, Jihoon picks the phone up, holding it on the edge as he puts his chin on his knee. “Not yet. Guess who proposed last night, your time.”

Mingyu shakes his hair out, laughing. “Really? I didn’t see it anywhere.” And then, suspicious: “Is this information I’m allowed to know?”

“Of course it is.”

Mingyu nods. “Does Seungcheol-hyung know yet?”

“No.”

“Nice,” he grins. “That means we won, huh.”

Jihoon laughs, and buries his head against his knee.

* * *

* * *

Mingyu’s next visit is different in a lot of ways. It’s as if the universe has folded, a loose string looping them back right where they left off. During their time together, Jihoon moves through the city with an unconscious pull; their fingers find the spaces in between, the back of his hand perpetually bumping Mingyu's like a clumsy moth trapped under an especially tall and charming light with nowhere to go.

It always makes him smile; it never feels like enough.

* * *

There aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things he wants to do, but the days and weeks and months build brick-by-brick, a foundation in his life when everything else is in constant motion. But they’re sitting in a small cafe in January now, and Mingyu is _animated_ , talking about an article he read on coastal development in a planning magazine. Jihoon doesn’t understand any of it, but he watches Mingyu spreads his arms out every time he gets excited, about _urban planning_ , and Jihoon thinks.

Well.

Is this what it’s like, to be so thoroughly and completely overwhelmed with warmth for the person in front of you? To feel a need to stay just like this, for as long as possible? He could sit anywhere and watch Mingyu talk about art and architecture, his best friends, a dog he met on the street, and Jihoon would feel just as good and whole and present as he does right now.

They’re at a table against the wall. Without speaking, Jihoon slides out from his chair and swings around to Mingyu’s side. To his benefit, Mingyu continues in stride, pausing long enough to kiss the top of Jihoon’s head when he briefly rests his forehead straight onto Mingyu’s shoulder. 

When he looks up, Mingyu trails off, eyes curious. 

_Anything_ , Jihoon thinks. _You could talk about everything_.

“You’re a nerd,” Jihoon says. “I wanted you to know that.”

“Ah, yes, but you’re dating me, so what does that say about you?”

“Why does everyone ask me this? The answer is that I’ve settled,” Jihoon says promptly, and Mingyu barks out a laugh, loud enough that a couple of patrons look their way. “See? Can’t take you anywhere.”

“You’re the one sitting on the same side of the table as me like an ax murderer.”

“I love having you here.” 

The words come out quiet, blurted out on the tail end of Mingyu’s sentence. Jihoon knits his brows, sheepish. An arm slips around his shoulders, and Mingyu is kissing him, free hand on his cheek to guide his face up.

His thumb skims high on Jihoon’s cheekbone; for once, Jihoon has no urge to look away. “I love being here,” Mingyu says, hand sliding around to hold both cheeks between his palms. He smushes Jihoon’s face, smacking another quick kiss to his lips before he lets go and returns to his coffee.

“So I found all these data points with regard to habitat destruction, and it’s disgusting, what companies can get away if they hand over enough money or power, particularly on the coast with the rising tides–” He stumbles a little, when Jihoon plants an elbow on the table, leaning heavily against it, cheek on his palm. “And with...climate...change, I can talk about something else?”

Jihoon smiles and shakes his head.

“No, tell me more,” he says. “I want to know more.”

* * *

* * *

“I don’t _need_ to decorate,” Jihoon says to no avail–Mingyu just keeps dragging him down the aisles as if he has any idea at all where he’s going, eyes darting around, ears metaphorically perked, trying to find the perfect furniture set via smell.

“You _live_ here,” Mingyu says, glancing back at him. “You’ve lived here for a year, and your place still looks like a broke university dorm room. Don’t you want to make it look, I don’t know, homey?”

“It’s just for sleeping and eating, who cares?”

Mingyu stops abruptly, eyes lifted to the ceiling. “Hyung, only you,” he says, “would think about the literal concept of a living space in the most minimalistic sense. The layout of your kitchen makes me want to weep.”

Jihoon tips his chin up, smile crooked. “I love when you talk dirty.” Mingyu just shakes his head and laughs. Hands clasped behind his back, Jihoon brushes past him and turns on heel to continue down the aisle. “No, really, tell me more about transom lights and decorative motifs.”

Mingyu gives him a funny look at that. “Did you look up architectural terminology while I was gone just to flirt with me?”

“Maybe,” Jihoon says, grinning now, chuckling when Mingyu bumps into him, framing his face to kiss him; he stumbles, they right themselves and Mingyu slings an arm around his shoulders and leads them to the kitchen showrooms. 

“I do _not_ have enough money for any of this, anyway,” Jihoon adds. “Why were you so set on specifically coming here?”

“Maybe Soonyoung-hyung told me there'd be meatballs.”

Jihoon studies him for a moment. 

“You should definitely be embarrassed by that,” he says.

He pulls away from Mingyu’s arm, but catches his wrist as it falls, linking their hands together. He’s not–he’s not a touchy-feely person, well, ever, really, but the thought of not knowing when he’ll get to do any of this again makes it feel more vital, somehow. Because Mingyu is Mingyu, he lifts their joined hands and presses a kiss to the back of Jihoon’s. They’re in a semi-enclosed kitchen now, idly studying the set up. Jihoon runs his free hand along the counter, fingers dragging along marble. He isn’t buying anything today–maybe the meatballs, if Mingyu wants them that much–but there’s this moment–this glitch–

He looks up at Mingyu, this too-perfect kitchen around them, shifting so his back is against the counter, and it’s like a snapshot, a peek into a different universe, and Jihoon–Jihoon is _convinced_ he is seconds away from vibrating right out of his skin. 

HIs mouth drops open to speak, but nothing comes out. Mingyu’s smile fades and, before Jihoon can protest, his hands wrap around Jihoon’s hips. With a hop, he helps Mingyu lifts him onto the counter and settle between his legs.

“Bad idea,” Jihoon whispers, finding his voice, though they’re both laughing when Mingyu kisses him, off-center. 

“But I can’t do this in your kitchen at home,” Mingyu complains when Jihoon accidentally-on-purpose knees him in the side, making no real move to get down. “It’s usually messy and I’m _always_ afraid the counter will snap in half.”

Jihoon's eyes lift to the ceiling. “It’s not _that_ messy.”

A warm palm settles on his shoulder, and Mingyu looks very, very serious when he says, “Thank you for not defending the structural integrity of your fake kitchen.”

“Mm.” Jihoon kicks his feet a bit, and looks around. “I like this one better.” 

“Why, because it’s all Swedish and hard to pronounce?”

“It has its own room, for one.” Jihoon shrugs, hooking an ankle around the back of Mingyu's knee, jerking in so Mingyu dips towards him. “You’re in it. There are lots of reasons.”

In the next moment, he’s boxed in against the counter by Mingyu’s arms, head slumped onto Jihoon’s shoulder. He’s smiling, and when Jihoon tucks his fingers through Mingyu’s belt loops, Mingyu sighs and sinks heavier against him. 

At that, Jihoon cranes his neck back, watching Mingyu turn his at the same time. He still has the faint trappings of a smile pulling at his mouth, all soft around the edges. Jihoon is fiddling with the hair in Mingyu’s eyes when he says, not quite looking him in the eye, “I graduate next month."

Jihoon’s fingers still. “I know.” His index finger draws a gentle path down the curve of Mingyu’s nose. “I’d go if I could.”

"I know," Mingyu says this time around. He nuzzles Jihoon’s hand, eyes closed, kissing his palm, his chin, his mouth.

"Okay,” Jihoon says when they part. He bites his lip. “Well. Good."

They’re too close. Jihoon inhales slow, one hand slipping into one of Mingyu’s back pockets, the other on Mingyu’s jaw when they kiss again. “Open floor plan,” Mingyu mumbles, even as his hands trail heavy at the small of Jihoon’s back and high up one thigh. 

“Pft, there’s wall dividers,” Jihoon whispers, breathless, a sweet laugh leaving him when Mingyu stakes claim on his neck. He stifles a soft moan, trailing his palms down Mingyu’s chest until he can curl his fingers past the waistband of Mingyu’s jeans, pulling him closer. 

His eyes flutter open and he starts, holding a hand up to his face and using the other to push Mingyu away. It’s another couple, looking startled if amused, and Jihoon practically launches off the counter and latches onto Mingyu’s wrist. 

“Sorry!” he says. “Thank you!” and Mingyu laughs at him as they flee. Mingyu adjusts their grip, weaving them across the store until they come across the living room section. At the nearest empty room setup, Mingyu makes a beeline for the sofa and drops. Like a chain reaction, Jihoon gets jerked down half onto him and settles in next to him, hand on his thigh. 

Briefly, Mingyu tips his head back against the sofa, but he lifts it just as quick and rises. “No, I’ll fall asleep.”

“Take a nap when we get back then.”

Mingyu pokes a fake book on a wire bookshelf. “I can’t, I have to stay awake. I only get so many days with you.”

“You...have all of them,” Jihoon says, squirming in his seat. “I mean, not–even when I’m not around.” He frowns. “Would your parents think it was weird if I made Minghao Facetime your graduation?”

Bemused, Mingyu asks, “Why would they think it was weird?”

“I don’t know.” He scratches the back of his head, glancing away. “I wasn’t sure how much–if you’re close.”

Mingyu stares, and then rolls his eyes and picks a fake book off the shelf to look at the cover. “They know my boyfriend exists, yes.”

“Oh. Mine, too. If...you were wondering. They didn’t believe me at first, because I haven’t dated anyone in awhile, but my dad said you looked like you play a chaebol on tv, which I think was a compliment...” Jihoon sort of trails off unsurely and Mingyu laughs at him, shaking his head as he tucks the book back on the shelf.

“Surprised you didn’t just bury your head in the sand instead.”

With a blank face, Jihoon clutches his chest, glad for the excuse to ease whatever this itchy feeling in his bones is. “I’m sexually attracted to you being mean to me, please know this.”

“Yeah, I know, considering you tried to get me to fuck you in an Ikea kitchen ten minutes ago.”

Jihoon laughs–cackles, really–and this is the way it happens: not hit by a bullet train so much as you are inches away when it rushes past. An intake of breath, and then your clothes settle, your hair lies flat. The world returns. It doesn’t quite ignite him like the sudden and all-consuming match strike he always figured it’d be. 

Still. 

How could he have ever thought he wouldn't be able to tell the difference? It's simple, like when the lyrics spill out of him faster than he can get them down in the right order. Because Soonyoung, unfortunately, was right: this is what he writes about. 

This, _this_ , right here–the very real way another laugh has already lodged itself somewhere in his throat, desperate for escape, for a home found buried against Mingyu's shoulder, for the good things yet to come. It’s all so right somehow, sitting in a fake living room and looking up at a wiped-out Mingyu thinking _oh, of course this is it._

 _Of course it's you_.

"Minggoo," he says, and stops.

A distracted smile tugs at the corner of Mingyu's mouth. "Mm?"

Jihoon opens his mouth, closes it. Counts to four because it seems like a safe number. "Nothing."

Yawning, Mingyu sticks his hands in his pockets and aims a lazy toe at the edge of a cabinet. "I want meatballs," he says, pouting.

"I. Want. Uh." Jihoon touches the rubbery leaf of the fake plant on the side table. Puts his hands in his lap. Wills his body not to leave earth's orbit. His voice fails him halfway through: 

"I love–you?"

At first, he thinks maybe Mingyu is too far away–his back is turned as he notes the wood finish of the shelving in front of him. Then his shoulders steel a touch, a breath, a _hair_. And so Jihoon waits, balanced on the thinnest of limbs, crossing his arms like a shield.

"You heard me, right?"

Mingyu turns, hands still jammed in his pockets. 

"Were you asking me or telling me?"

"I think I was telling you." The words hobble out with stumbling uncertainty. Jihoon looks at him and swallows his heart down. "I'm telling you."

Mingyu nods, chin aimed towards his chest, and takes a couple of strides on long legs before dropping heavy next to Jihoon, who squeezes his eyes shut. A hand lands on his shoulder, pulling on his shirt, and he sighs when Mingyu leans in, in, in, smearing a kiss on his jaw, the space behind his ear, the pulse point along the line of his neck.

His arms unfold slowly, and he shivers when Mingyu settles, curled up smaller than he has a right to, head pillowed on Jihoon's shoulder. In a buried, blushing way Mingyu says, “All I can do whenever I go back home is draw you these houses I keep imagining you'd live in.”

A hesitant smile tugs at Jihoon’s mouth as he opens his eyes. “Is that a good thing?”

Mingyu tightens his fingers. “It’s–a frustrating thing.” He laughs, a breath out. “It makes me wish you were closer.” 

And then, subdued: “I just always wish you were closer.”

“You’re here now,” Jihoon says, and it–it sounds weak, useless, and _he_ feels so suddenly small and incapable. “One day...” 

He hesitates, because he’s not sure how to finish. Or if it’s true. He’s unsure, even now, if he’ll let himself have it. Everything is delicate, a fragile ecosystem balanced on a pin needle that he is somehow still so convinced he will ruin. 

The second Mingyu leaves, Jihoon always wants him back. He knows this is how it is, that this is all he gets right now: texts over wifi and stray 4am Instagram comments while one of them is sleeping or busy, choppy voice calls and an ocean’s worth of time difference between them. He should be grateful, maybe, that he lives _when_ he does. That they can be together, even when they aren’t. But it eats away at him, too. 

It’s self-infliction at its finest: Kim Mingyu is always one unlocked screen from him, sure–and it is always just enough to remind Jihoon of what he has, and what he is perpetually too far away to hold.

The grip on his shirt slackens, bit by bit, and when Mingyu’s hand finally droops, slipping down to Jihoon’s stomach, Jihoon breathes in and out to match the steady rise and fall of Mingyu’s chest. With care, he straightens so Mingyu’s head is settled more comfortably on his shoulder. They can sit here for awhile longer, Jihoon thinks, taking his hand.

A passerby–a girl his age maybe with a shock of electric blue hair, toting along another girl by the hand–gives them a curious glance, and smiles small and easy at the two of them when she realizes Mingyu is sleeping. 

Jihoon matches it, and lets his eyes fall shut. 

* * *

* * *

When he undresses an exhausted Mingyu and drags him to bed later, fully intending to sit at his desk with his headphones in to get some work done while he finally sleeps off an 11-hour flight, Mingyu grabs his upper arms instead and until Jihoon clumsily lands on top of him. Mingyu groans, turning towards the wall with one of Jihoon’s arms still held hostage in his grip. 

“That belongs to me,” Jihoon tells him, but Mingyu shushes him. 

“It’s mine,” he mumbles half-into the pillow under his head. “Just for now. Come closer, I’m cold.”

“You were too tired to put a shirt on, dummy,” Jihoon sighs, but wraps an arm around Mingyu’s middle anyway to tug until his back is flush to Jihoon’s chest. 

When Mingyu laughs, it’s the softest of exhales. “All part of my master plan. If I'm mostly naked in your bed then good things will happen once I'm not on airplane mode anymore.”

“Absolutely correct logic,” Jihoon drawls, nose pressed to the nape of Mingyu’s neck.

“I love you,” Mingyu responds, voice faraway, somewhere between here and his dreams. “I didn’t say it back earlier, but you knew it already.”

A thousand buckets of ice water pour down Jihoon’s back at once, even though this shouldn’t be a surprise. It isn’t a surprise. 

It’s not. Right?

In a small, nonplussed voice, he asks, “Did I?”

Silence hangs heavy in the air. Then Mingyu tells him, faint but adamant: “You should.”

Neither of them says anything for a moment. Before Jihoon can really help it, a few, sudden, fat tears roll across the bridge of his nose; he blinks hard a few times to clear his eyes and on the last, lifts his hand to brush the wetness away with a sniff.

Mingyu’s voice is soft and singsong when he says, “Are you _crying_?”

Mortified, Jihoon immediately shoves his face between Mingyu's bare shoulders. “No!”

“You _are_!”

“Shut up.” His voice is muffled. What are the odds of recovering from this? Slim to none. Mingyu is going to grab his phone and try to record it any second now. “ _You're_ crying. I've never cried once in my life, not even as a baby.”

“Sure, sure,” Mingyu says with a laugh, turning in his arms unexpectedly. He palms Jihoon’s thigh and hooks it over his own, wriggling in until they’re mostly sharing a pillow. Eyes open, attentive, he drags a knuckle quick down Jihoon’s nose and then tucks the half-curled hand under his cheek. 

He smiles, closed-mouthed. “I’ll make fun of you tomorrow, maybe.”

Jihoon doesn't know what to do with him laid out bare like this. He doesn’t know how to say _I never thought I’d be here_ out loud, or how to explain the kind of bone-deep weariness that comes along with that that is now inexplicably _gone_ , forever.

How many songs has he written for his friends? For complete strangers? Line after line about this moment, and the million other moments that preceded it, with zero fucking idea of what it really felt like. He's looked and watched and wondered and gotten close, just once, maybe. But this is entirely new. Scary. Perfect.

It’s unfolded in parts, an intrinsic thing. There’s a hundred, a thousand different, little memories superimposed over this one: Mingyu kissing him hard on the mouth that first night, like it'd have killed him to wait a second longer; Mingyu fast asleep on Jihoon's studio sofa in the middle of a sunny day in LA, taking up too much space; Mingyu talking to Jihoon's alley cat in a high, chirpy voice while he sorts the recycling because he thinks Jihoon can't hear him. It's a looping memory of airport hellos and goodbyes and everything else in between the fall and rise of wheels on tarmac. 

Jihoon directs a mournful wail into his pillow. Then he laughs, and it's–shivery, pure and utter disbelief. His eyes burn again when he peeks at Mingyu, but nothing falls this time around. “I really love you, what the _fuck_.”

Mingyu blinks, clears his throat. He says, “Ah, well,” in this tremulous way that makes Jihoon start to close the distance between them, “that's good, because, you know. Like I said before, me. Too.” He's whispering now, bleary-eyed and mostly focused on Jihoon's mouth. “Me–for–a long time–”

He trails off when Jihoon kisses him, slow enough and long enough to make it count. Mingyu frames his jaw with a warm hand, wedging his free arm under Jihoon until he can nudge Jihoon into his lap, knees framing his hips. Mingyu grabs hold of his waist, twists his fingers into Jihoon’s hair, and promptly yawns directly against his mouth.

The spells breaks; Jihoon snorts and sits up, adjusting his shirt. “Sexy, sleepy tree,” he says fondly, pushing off Mingyu's chest to swing his leg over and climb off the bed. Mingyu whines a very distinct Mingyu Whine, curling in until he's hugging the pillow under his head, watching Jihoon rub at his eyes with one quick, discreet fist as he sits at his desk.

“Close your eyes, I'll put my headphones in and wake you in a few hours.”

“Don't put your headphones in,” Mingyu mumbles. His eyes are at least closed now, though he does open one sharply, a wrinkle between his brows. “You're not working on one of your loud, horny ones, right?”

Jihoon throws his head back and laughs. “Things can be soft and horny,” he offers, pulling his MIDI keyboard in front of him and shaking his mouse, a smile spilling over into the air around him.

“Strategically speaking, that's not true at all.” He's almost gone now, wrinkle disappeared and shoulders sagging bit by bit. “Piano? That one with the,” he hums a few, croaky notes. “Just until I fall asleep.”

With a smile, Jihoon finds it. “Whatever you want.”

The corner of Mingyu's mouth not hidden by the pillow tilts on axis. Jihoon lets himself stare, because he wants to, and because he can. Because it makes him feel happy. He's going to be careful with this. He is. Mingyu deserves it and frankly, so does he.

Jihoon adjusts the volume, hits play and gets to work.

* * *

There’s no sense of urgency when they wind up here late in the evening. No wild desperation, no unstoppable, angry little voice in his head to convince him he’s got this all wrong, and Jihoon savors as much detail as he can on their last full day: 

The tug of the sheets from where he’s lying on his stomach, trying to dig his knees in, desperate for friction, the edge of a pillow clutched in his fist, the weight of Mingyu’s chest bearing down on his back, a hand on his hip hard enough to bruise. Every movement is deliberate, and a soft, despairing sound gets stuck in his throat when an endearment is murmured between his shoulders, like Mingyu thinks the words will sink into Jihoon’s skin if he says them close enough. 

He buries his face against his fist, eyes shut tight, and before, he wondered what was even the point of thinking about something like this. Them.

Jihoon wasn’t allowed to be in love with someone, and he certainly was not allowed to be loved back because he was never any good at it, anyway. He was too rough with love, too un-used to tenderness. So what was the point? Best to just get both the emptiness that was constant and the hopefulness _he was not allowed to have_ and set it to ever-changing beats and chords instead, because if he couldn’t have it, then he could at least give it to other people.

But now.

Now–

* * *

* * *

The next morning almost feels like an extension of a dream, so blurred around the edges that, for a moment, Jihoon isn’t even sure he’s awake. Then his brain catches up and he remembers: this is goodbye. Mingyu murmurs something faint, fingers curled against the bare skin of Jihoon’s shoulder; Jihoon contemplates not opening his eyes, ever. 

Half asleep, he's certain Mingyu will stay here, just like this.

“M'up,” he says anyway, muffled into his pillow. He blinks, slow, and then more deliberate, inhaling through his nose. Mingyu kisses his shoulder. 

“You’re leaving?” Jihoon asks, though he already knows the answer. Mingyu nods, teeth tugging briefly on his bottom lip. 

“I have to leave now if I want to catch my flight.”

The movement after that is easy: he struggles, mind foggy with sleep, slipping an arm around Mingyu’s neck to pull him in with a smile. The angle is awkward when Mingyu kisses him, halfway on the bed, and the very moment it ends Jihoon thinks _oh, no, don't leave_ and _please, let's stay like this another week, another day, another minute._

_Just one more minute._

He thinks he should say some of this, but with the sun barely bleeding through the curtains, all he can get out is a drowsy, “Message me when you’re there,” before he's already curled up again. “And when you board. And when you land.”

Mingyu touches his cheek again. “I love you, too,” he says, smiling in a way that is both happy and not.

 _Wake up_ , Jihoon’s brain tries to tell him. Wake up, Lee Jihoon, and memorize this moment best: in a soft sweater and a beanie, duffle in his hand, Mingyu looks at him like he knows he’s about to pass out again, and there is this feeling that settles over Jihoon then, above all else, of being in love beyond a shadow of a doubt with the person in front of him. 

Jihoon turns his face in, going pink. “Go catch your flight.”

Mingyu only laughs and heads to the door. He’s out of sight, and Jihoon doesn’t bother to look up when he says goodbye, only says it back faintly. The door closes with a soft, final click. 

Jihoon doesn’t even have time to regret it before he’s asleep again.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jihoon sighs, pretending to be put out. “Do you want me to say it? I love you, Mingyu-ya. Please go celebrate with other people who also love you, but are not in love with you, which is what I am.”
> 
> “Solid effort, ten out of ten,” Mingyu says with a nod. “I’m in love with you too, did you know that?”
> 
> “You may have said it once or twice, yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, all the way at the end of this lil fic that could. This last part was always meant to be a sort of bookend/epilogue, so I hope it doesn't disappoint. If you'd like to yell at me, you can always find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ljhmyg?s=09), where I will probably be screaming about Lee Jihoon on my own already, or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/ljhmyg) if you're more shy.
> 
> Thanks to my best girls, Tori Maria and SK, and thanks to the countless other friends who put up with me even when I let my emotional constipation get the best of me sometimes. Thank you for making me feel like a writer again.
> 
> ❤

* * *

Holding a finished product in your hands is always a bit odd, Jihoon thinks. You work endlessly on something for weeks or months or years and then one day, that’s it, there’s no more for you to do, short of stall. One day, you just have to be satisfied with it. So you put a period at the end, okay, this is done, I am done, I promise, for real this time. You submit it, you upload it, you exhibit it, you publish it, you play it loud as it'll go. And then you wait. 

Thankfully, Jihoon doesn’t have to wait long.

The album circulates quickly through West coast publications to a fair amount of success, snagging 4’s and 5’s across the board. Jihoon greedily sntaches up every paragraph he can find about cleverly constructed production, about elevated lyricism bleeding through every track. He swallows them down raw, because if he finds enough people to tell him he’s good enough, it’ll prove something to the cruel, negating voice in his head that tries to knock the wind out from under him, every time.

The release gets him more work than he can keep up with; the company is ecstatic and wants to hire him on in a more stable in-house position, his work and personal emails are flooded with congratulations from old classmates who’ve heard through the grapevine (also known as Jihoon’s loud and supportive friends), and from prospective labels and upcoming talent. He watches the unread badge count rise higher and higher along with the tension in his shoulders until one day he sees an unbelievably large number blaring bright red and shuts down. 

(This is the problem, he thinks, when your brain just won’t wire itself right: he can take the bad with the good, rain to get rainbows, dirt to grow flowers, whatever. But, even now, when he should be happy, determined, rushing to build a career–he’s overwhelmed, itchy, something off somehow, and at this point, he isn’t sure what leap to take next.)

* * *

* * *

Jihoon has never met _anyone's_ parents, let alone met them over Facetime, and he’s not planning on starting the day Mingyu graduates. “They deserve more respect than that,” Jihoon grumbles, and Mingyu agrees, eventually, and it’s _fine_ , but it means Jihoon only gets pictures, so well, no. It sucks, kind of. A lot.

But he does get this: Mingyu calls him from the single-person bathroom of a restaurant 4am West Coast time, already well past tipsy. Jihoon answers on autopilot, his pillow somehow on his head.

“Are you in a cave–I told my parents what you said–”

Jihoon scrunches his face up. “What, _why_ –?”

“They thought it showed strong character. Now they really want to meet you.” 

“I’ll meet ‘em,” Jihoon mumbles into his sheets, nearly half-asleep again, “meet’em wherever. Flap my arms, s’cheaper than a ticket.” 

At Mingyu’s soft laughter in response, he struggles to open his eyes, trying to come into consciousness properly. Mingyu says, “I wanted to see your face once today, at least. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Don’t apologize, it’s a cute face,” Jihoon says, adjusting the pillow so it’s not on top of his head anymore. He blinks, bleary-eyed, at his screen. 

“Cute face,” Mingyu agrees happily. And, in a different voice: “Oh. Blond face?”

Jihoon tries to look at his forehead, then pushes his fringe away with his free hand. “Oh, right. Got restless after the album came out.”

“I can see your forehead,” Mingyu whispers. 

“I’m aware,” Jihoon whispers back, mocking even while deliriously drowsy. 

“It’s a cute forehead.”

Jihoon shuts his eyes. “So I’ve told you.”

“I _love_ that forehead,” Mingyu says, and a thrill shoots up Jihoon’s spine. He cracks open an eye, the ends of his mouth hitching up.

“The forehead has trouble accepting affirmations, but it thinks you’re okay.”

Mingyu goes out of frame, like he’s holding his face with both hands. When he reappears, he makes a noise of dissatisfaction, a tiny, frustrated laugh. “I really miss you.”

Jihoon buries his face. “Me, too.”

“I’ll come back soon,” Mingyu promises drunkenly. “I’ll figure out my schedule–”

Sleepily, Jihoon says, “Minggoo, go enjoy your day.” Kind, but firm: “Don’t hide in a bathroom to talk to me.”

“But I want to talk to you.”

“Your friends and family are there, too; I’m not the only one who’s proud of you.”

“Sneaky, sneaky compliment,” Mingyu replies, and Jihoon opens his eyes when he laughs. 

“Please go.” 

“Okay,” he says, and makes no move to hang up. 

Jihoon sighs, pretending to be put out. “Do you want me to say it? I love you, Mingyu-ya. Please go celebrate with other people who also love you, but are not in love with you, which is what I am.”

“Solid effort, ten out of ten,” Mingyu says with a nod. “I’m in love with you too, did you know that?”

“You may have said it once or twice, yeah.” He raises his brows. “ _Go_.”

“Fine! Fine.” He blows a kiss, with the _mwah_ sound and Jihoon, despite the exhaustion, feels like he could punch a hole straight to the center of the earth. Mingyu just hangs up afterwards, too, and Jihoon is left staring at a blank screen, caught somewhere between affection and exasperation. 

A couple minutes later, Mingyu sends him a string of emojis–🥺🥵😬😶–and then _u looked cute...AND hot kekeke...wish u could go down on me right now_ and _then_ when he sends _You didn’t get me a graduation present…_ , Jihoon finally buries his face into his pillow and screams.

When he recovers, he grabs his phone and dials, finding Mingyu walking down a hallway. 

“First of all,” Jihoon says, scrambling to get his underwear past his thighs, “yes I did, and you know it just hasn’t gotten there yet, because you _have the tracking number I gave you_. Secondly– _secondly_ ,” Mingyu is back in the fucking bathroom again, “this is a one time thing.” 

Mingyu is breathing heavy, his collar open. “Please look forward to my many successes?” he tries, and Jihoon covers his eyes with a hand, snorting. 

“Just shut up and unzip your pants.”

* * *

* * *

The week before Mingyu’s birthday, Jihoon’s check comes in for the album. He’ll always get a percentage, but this is one of the reasons Jisoo pushed him towards this company: he gets a contracted base pay no matter what, no sliding scale, no bullshit. Just a very pleasing to look at number with a comma in it that he deposits immediately. 

There’s a million things he could do with it once it’s in his account. Put it into savings, maybe click CHECK OUT NOW on the Sennheiser condenser he’s had in his cart for months, or finally buy Breath of the Wild so everyone will stop yelling at him. 

Jihoon does none of these things.

At all.

He buys a plane ticket instead. 

He doesn’t think about it, really, until it’s finalized and he’s staring at a confirmation number from the airline, on top of all the mostly-unanswered emails. This is–bigger than him. Bigger than everything. 

Jihoon scrolls down bolded subject lines, opens one in particular, and starts typing.

* * *

* * *

Seungcheol Facetime’s him at the speed of light; Jihoon answers, chin on his knee, in the middle of his bed with his laptop open next to him. 

“Did you at _least_ ,” Seungcheol’s talking head starts carefully, “look up prices on those cheap sites? Or get one with a connection?”

Jihoon tries to remember before he settles on, “Genuinely that never occurred to me.”

Seungcheol stares at him. “How much was it?”

Glancing at the screen, open to his bank account, Jihoon lifts a shoulder. “Not...bad...like two Wonwoo Switches and a mid-range MIDI keyboard.”

“ _Two_ —? It never occurred to you that you could get a less expensive flight?”

“No,” Jihoon says. Honestly, he just clicked the first link, but it seems like Seungcheol really will lose it if Jihoon tells him this.

“Because you _needed_ to get a flight out this week? Because you wanted to see Mingyu?”

The tips of his ears feel hot. “Yes.”

There's another long, disbelieving pause. Then Seungcheol inhales through his teeth and nods a few times. “Well,” he says, sounding...amazed. “Wow. So you're definitely in love with him.”

It's not a question.

"I am."

Smiling, Seungcheol asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Actually," Jihoon answers, smiling back. "I do."

* * *

Four days later, they’re waiting for Jihoon at the airport. 

He accidentally spots Mingyu and Seungcheol before they see him: huddled together near the public part of the ride-share line, probably in an attempt to cut Jihoon off before he leaves. Jihoon’s gait slows, and he smiles even as he sighs and shakes his head. He clutches a strap of his backpack with one hand, his suitcase with the other, and slips through the crowd of people. 

He makes it another handful of steps before Mingyu sees him and is caught suspended in frame; his shoulders sag a touch, and the nervous, impatient smile he’d been wearing _blooms_. 

He’s wearing his glasses; Jihoon notches the bill of his cap down a little more, cheeks red when he reaches them. 

“We have a deal,” he says, letting Seungcheol take his roller suitcase from him. 

“Not on this continent,” Mingyu answers. 

“On this continent, you have to feel all of our love immediately,” Seungcheol says, sliding his fingers under Jihoon’s chin. “We’re waiting for Soonyoung-ah to drive around again, it’s fun. He’s done it three times already. I’m going to turn away now and look for him.”

Jihoon lifts his eyes to the sky, but doesn’t have a chance to make a snarky comment because Mingyu's arms wrap awkwardly around his shoulders, over the backpack. On tiptoe, Jihoon leans into the kiss, resting his cheek against Mingyu’s chest when Mingyu says with a pout, “Why are you wearing this? I can’t hug you properly.”

“If you just _waited_ like you were supposed to–”

“And miss embarrassing you in public?” Mingyu asks, mouth near his ear. “Never.”

Jihoon’s responding laugh is muffled; Mingyu squeezes him tighter. Then a car honks in the distance and Jihoon’s Soonyoung Senses go off like alarm bells. “That’s him, isn’t it,” he says with a long-suffering sigh, “I can feel it in my bones.” 

He looks up in time to catch Soonyoung stopping the car with a sharp screech, popping the trunk before tumbling out in excitement as if they haven’t seen each other in years and not roughly four months. 

“You’re here!” Soonyoung says–shouts–as Mingyu gently slips Jihoon’s backpack off his shoulders and he and Seungcheol make their way to the car. ”Jihoon-ah Number One Best Friend Is _Here_ –!”

Jihoon shoves the arm Soonyoung tries to throw around him away. Then he tips his head back, possibly in a new level exhaustion he has not yet experienced before, and allows Soonyoung a deep hug, because he looks like he’s going to scream into oblivion if Jihoon doesn’t offer him one (1) genuine human touch. 

“You’re so needy.” 

“Yes, it’s my best quality,” Soonyoung tells him, kissing his cheek. “I’m happy to see you.” 

“Well, me too,” Jihoon mumbles, shrugging his arm off and wiping his face with the back of his hand, eyes on the car. Mingyu is in the backseat already, head hanging out of the open window despite the weather much like a dog _very_ eager to go to the beach today, and Jihoon takes a shaky little determined breath in and marches forward. 

He slides into the back with Mingyu, and as the car heads off once more, he scoots over and puts his head on Mingyu’s shoulder. 

“I’m tired.”

Mingyu grabs the middle seatbelt to click him in, and _then_ kisses the top of his head; it’s possible Jihoon has always craved this kind of stability. “And you missed me.”

Their hands find each other–easy, unthinking, instinctual.

“Yeah,” Jihoon says softly. “And I missed you.”

* * *

* * *

Soonyoung drops him off at Mingyu’s but brings his luggage back to his, where Jihoon is staying for the next few days. Walking into the apartment is a surreal experience–Jihoon crosses the threshold and tries to remember how he felt the first time he did this, the last time he did this. It all seems so far away now. Like a different universe entirely. A different him. 

Neither of them speaks. They stare for a few long moments, just a pair of live wires on socked feet, ready to touch something, anything, to be set off. Mingyu sets Jihoon’s backpack down and clears his throat. 

“Ah...are you hungry?” 

Jihoon’s ribcage feels compressed; he takes a step and shakes his head. 

“Are you...tired?”

He takes another step. “Why are you nervous?”

“I don’t know,” Mingyu admits with a dry laugh, taking his hands out of his pockets. “Do you ever picture something over and over in so many different ways that when it actually happens, you don’t really feel awake?”

"Bordering on too much sincerity,” Jihoon replies. He’s in front of Mingyu now, chin tilted up. "Reign it in, Mingyu-ya.”

Mingyu reaches out, touching his hair delicately, combing it into something suitable now that it’s not trapped under a hat. He asks, “What do you want to do?” and Jihoon doesn’t have an answer. 

Anything, everything, nothing at all. He wants to watch bad dramas on the sofa with his head on Mingyu’s chest. Wants to kiss him. Wants to fuck him in the shower, too, but that seems a little ambitious post 11-hour intercontinental flight. Whichever, whatever–the thought coaxes a brief smile across his mouth–it doesn’t matter, does it? 

He looks down. “I have to tell you something.”

There’s a pause. “Yeah?” Mingyu knits his brows together. “Is everything okay?” 

Jihoon almost laughs. For once, for real, he says what he wants to: “I think my life has never been this okay before.”

“Oh,” Mingyu says, sweet. “That’s–nice.”

They’re hovering awkwardly between the entryway and the kitchen. Jihoon reaches out, clutching Mingyu’s sweater in his grip. In response, Mingyu’s hands fit at the small of his back, a hip, gathering him closer. Maybe shower sex isn’t so ambitious after all. 

“Maybe just a blowjob–take this off,” Jihoon says lightly, turning to head up the stairs. 

Mingyu follows. 

“Hold on, what did you want to tell me?”

“I’m telling you to take your clothes off.” They reach the landing, and Jihoon hooks a right, to the bathroom. Says, jittery and over his shoulder: “I sort of lied and about when my return flight is–can you bring me clean clothes when you come in?”

A hand latches onto his wrist, stopping him as he moves to open the door. “Wait, what?” Mingyu pulls on the back of his shirt until Jihoon faces him once more. He sounds confused, voice pitched high. “What?”

Jihoon licks his lips, studying the space between them. 

“What do you mean?” Mingyu says, quieter now.

“I turned down the company in California,” Jihoon says. He glances up, taking a massive breath in. “Actually, I got an email from a friend a few weeks ago–Beomju-hyung, met him working a gig, he helped me a lot when I was in school. He wanted to know if I was interested in working with him, said Amber-noona’s been linking him my stuff, and he was really impressed with what I’d been doing post-graduation. He just–wasn’t sure how long I was planning on living there, or if I ever thought about joining a company here, as a producer–”

Mingyu's smiles crackles in the air. 

“And, I thought, maybe. Maybe I could stay,” a small breath now, uneven with nerves, “for a break. My rent is paid for April already, so–”

“The month?” Mingyu’s arms twitch, wanting to reach out again but unsure if he’s supposed to. “Are you–you’re staying for a _month_?”

“I...don’t...have a return flight technically?” Jihoon says eventually. He scrunches his face. “I mean, I’m going back, probably in a month, because I have to, but I think–maybe. I think I want to be–with.” He stops, and laughs, self-deprecating. 

“This was a lot easier when I did it in my head.”

He finally, finally looks at Mingyu again, and it’s a _big_ mistake: Mingyu's eyes are big, open, and he looks happy, impossibly so, but in that way where he might tear up in a second or two. 

“If you cry about this, I _am_ going to make fun of you.”

“But you’ll be here when you do,” Mingyu says, eyes a little glassy anyway, grinning. “Right?”

 _Ugh_. Jihoon lets out a breath, impatient as he shoves gently at Mingyu’s chest before turning to open the bathroom door. “Can you just get in the fucking shower with me? This is so much.”

“You can’t avoid your feelings with shower sex,” Mingyu singsongs, planting his chin on Jihoon’s head, stupid-long arms dangling over his shoulders. “I look _very_ sexy wet, you’ll fall in love with me twice.”

Jihoon is going to _die_. “Why am I here?” he tells the floor, but he smiles to himself afterwards, despite it. “You’re underestimating how good I am at distractions.”

One of Mingyu’s arms slips around Jihoon’s chest, hugging a shoulder; the other roams decidedly lower. Jihoon sighs, tipping his head back, as Mingyu presses a lone kiss to his neck and says, “Prove it.”

* * *

They end up on the sofa after all, half-naked, Mingyu struggling to keep his eyes open and Jihoon curled up on top of him. It’s–nice. Content. Jihoon is _consumed_ by a feeling of rightness, and a need to never pick his head up ever again, when he barely registers Mingyu’s sleepy, “Where are you gonna stay?” 

“Future husbands told me they have a spare room; I can stay there until I figure it out.” 

A hand sweeps down the center of Jihoon’s back and up again. “That sounds like a good idea,” he says, eyes shut. He touches the nape of Jihoon’s neck now. 

Jihoon pushes himself up with a hand on Mingyu’s chest, watching as Mingyu cracks open his eyes to see what he wants. “I think–all of this is still. New. And if I move here, and, well. Move. _Here_ –”

Mingyu’s hand slips under the waistband of his joggers–

“–ahhh, it’ll feel like–”

“Too much too soon?” Mingyu guesses. 

“No. I don’t know. A little.” He pauses, and resolutely puts his head back down. “...I’ve never loved someone before.”

Mingyu moves to grab him around the middle, stops like he knows maybe that's not necessarily something that needs to be comforted, and does it anyway just to heft him further up the sofa, so they’re facing each other. “Never?”

“Not–not to the point where I knew it was real. Where I trusted myself.” 

Looking someone directly in the eye when you’re admitting something to them is possibly the worst fucking thing in the entire world to experience, in Jihoon’s opinion. Bad or good–most people are open books, and every twitch, every blink, every glance darted off to the side, it’s all catalogued in Jihoon’s brain a thousand times over. 

As it is now, this chilly April night could fill entire notebooks. A dozen different lines about the way Mingyu looks at him: disbelieving, tender, maybe a little smug. Trying not to smile, because this is important, it matters, he wants to listen. 

“I want to take it slow, and I know I’ve said that before but it’s–like I said, it’s all new to me, and, you know. We.” His touch strays to Mingyu’s mouth; his tongue darts out and Jihoon's life flashes before his eyes. “Ah–we have time. To figure that out, too. But I wanted to tell you that I’m–I feel good. About this."

He catches Mingyu's eye. "I feel good."

Mingyu shifts them around until they're on their sides, Jihoon buried against the cushions. He's ready for the kiss Mingyu gives him, except he isn’t, at all. He spills over, overwhelmed, flush scraping along his neck and cheeks, and wrenches himself away to say, “I didn’t come back for you.”

Mingyu, attached to his collarbone now, laughs at him.

"Not just for you,” Jihoon amends.

“I know,” Mingyu says amiably. He palms Jihoon’s waist and then his thigh. Jihoon feels grumpy, equal parts exhausted from his flight and embarrassed by this delicate earnestness when he presses careful fingers against Mingyu’s chest. 

Then he shoves Mingyu off the sofa. 

“Stop that.”

Smiling, he means. Mingyu's head pops up, delighted, and he plants his chin on the seat cushion.

“I didn’t even really miss you,” Jihoon tells him with a frown, ears burning. “It was just—Los Angeles doesn't have a real winter."

Mingyu laughs again. “Okay.”

"I missed snow," Mingyu grabs at Jihoon’s arms, "and–not having someone speak to me really slowly because they think my accent in English means I'm stupid," he nods, mostly listening, tugging Jihoon off the sofa too so he lands gentle on top of Mingyu, "and I like our ocean better."

A whisper distance away, Mingyu blinks. "It's the same ocean?"

"Well this side is better," Jihoon says with a huff, rolling in between Mingyu's thighs. He's only wearing boxer briefs, and then isn’t, and Jihoon arches a solitary brow and says, “You’re going to get rug burn on your shoulders or something.”

Mingyu shrugs, yanking a throw pillow off the sofa to tuck under his lower back. “I feel like it’s worth it?”

It is, it _is_ , and it strikes Jihoon not too much later that he’s collected years’ worth of writing about something just out of reach. Bits of it existed in unrestrained burts over laid out beats, sure, and in vibrant hooks and choruses; he’s learned to mark the growing weight behind his work by the people he’s let in and the observations he’s scrawled into countless margins. 

But it’s hard to imagine this, now–Mingyu, one long leg hooked over Jihoon’s shoulder, eyes closed, hands roaming–not woven into every line, into song after song, even the ones he’ll never write down. Jihoon creates constant melodies in his head for the moments that bring him to his knees, and all of it, everything he’s ever done, starts off with a simple chord progression, a few unconnected phrases–

(Mingyu curls up, grabbing his face with both hands to smear a messy kiss along his mouth–)

But Jihoon has been writing this _particular_ song in his head most of his life, it feels like. If he can understand embracing the full force of something when you don’t know what the end result will be–if he can fuck Mingyu on the floor of this apartment, push him back down and lay a hand over his chest, unearth a song in time to the hummingbird heartbeat going off under his palm and finally put it all down on paper– 

Well, then it’s probably worth holding onto.

* * *

Jihoon wakes up in bed, and Mingyu’s there. 

For a few unreserved minutes, Jihoon lies with his arm around Mingyu’s waist, nose squashed at the nape of his neck. The sense of familiarity is so striking he almost doesn’t know what to do. Rolling onto his back, Mingyu doing the same in his sleep, he takes it in: morning streaming through the space between the curtains to throw light across their bodies, Mingyu’s soft breaths in and out, the stillness that comes from watching dust motes swirl in the air. 

He takes this in, too: the knowledge that they’re here, in the same time zone. And might be, again and again, sometime very soon. Jihoon turns his head to look at him until he can’t take it anymore; he smacks Mingyu gently in the chest with the back of his hand, then reaches up to chuck him on the chin. 

He pokes Mingyu’s cheek and bites back a smile when Mingyu, without opening his eyes, reaches up to wrap a hand around his wrist. 

“Are you checking to see if I’m actually here?”

“No, I just like annoying you,” Jihoon tells him, and Mingyu laughs. 

Jihoon wriggles around, kicking the blanket down a bit, nearly climbing on Mingyu before he kisses the shell of Mingyu’s ear and says, “Happy birthday.” 

WIth a pleased groan, Mingyu stretches out like a starfish. He curls the arm he’s tucked under Jihoon up, so Jihoon’s pulled tighter to his chest. “Best birthday.”

“It’s morning, your party doesn’t even start for twelve more hours at _least_."

“ _Best_ birthday,” Mingyu repeats, manhandling Jihoon until Mingyu’s spooning him. “Go back to sleep. Marvel at the state of your life later.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Jihoon laughs, bright and blissful, and when he first ran away after he graduated, it was because he couldn’t deal with being so sad around the people that loved him, who loved each other. Going away made it better, for awhile, and he did try. Jihoon didn’t run, and _keep_ running–he ran, and then stayed, and tried to be okay. 

He doesn’t think Mingyu is the reason he’s better; he thinks Mingyu made him happier, and there’s a difference held _somewhere_ in that, if you wade deep enough. Somehow, he’s learned to keep the good things even if the bad ones manage to trip him up sometimes, and he’s torn apart the crueler lies he’s told himself over the years. 

He’s spent weeks, months, wanting to be nearer to Mingyu in every sense because there was that thing, that mean little thought that made him so sure every time they left each other, it’d be for the last time. But he knows now that this is love: being this close, even when you're far away. Because it makes the part where you are together again matter that much more. 

He feels Mingyu kiss his cheek. “I’m hungry.”

Jihoon sniffs, unimpressed. “Thought you were trying to sleep?”

“Changed my mind. Make me breakfast.”

He shoots Mingyu a wary look of disbelief. “You trust me in your kitchen?”

Mingyu thinks about this, and then climbs out of bed. “No. I’ll make breakfast.”

“What if,” Jihoon says after him, sitting up, “I _cleaned_ while you cooked breakfast?”

When Mingyu looks at him, it’s with the deepest sense of gratitude, hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear those words, baby.”

“I’m going to choke you.”

“Those too!” Mingyu says airily, cackling and hurrying down the stairs when Jihoon trips out of bed to follow him. 

“ _WHAT_?”

* * *

Later, Jihoon is _drunk_ when he all but throws himself onto the sofa, hooking a casual leg over one of Mingyu’s knees, because fuck it, "You're cute."

Mingyu looks at his leg, and then at him. “Are you comfortable?” he asks, but he’s smiling. They’re tucked into the corner, Hansol, Seungkwan and Seokmin all somehow crammed onto it with them. 

“I have something to show you,” Jihoon says, only to Mingyu, holding out his phone. “Noona texted–the company did a live lounge of a few tracks off the album, finally posted the video.”

He gets a patented Mingyu Noise in response–a tiny squeak of excitement, complete with grabby hands–and Jihoon thinks two thoughts simultaneously, which are _really? him?_ and _yes,_ him _, you idiot._

Phone held hostage in his grip, Jihoon tilts out of frame, making Mingyu reach for it; Mingyu knocks his own cap up, wrapping an arm around Jihoon’s waist to kiss him instead. Startled by the sudden mouth on his, Jihoon drops the phone. He frowns when Mingyu snatches it, and yanks his bill down past his eyes in shame.

“That’s cheating.”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it,” Mingyu scoffs, poking ineffectually at Jihoon’s phone, the screen off.

“Yeah, but you could at least pretend to let me tease you,” Jihoon says, an elbow resting on Mingyu’s shoulder now. He reaches over to unlock his phone with his other hand. The video’s already open at the start, and Jihoon hits play.

He’s watched it already, was there when it was recorded, but it’s different seeing it through someone else’s eyes. It’s stripped down to raw, bare parts, slower, impossibly more heartfelt: stools and a couple of condenser mics to give it an old school tone, a few instruments on accompaniment. The sound is muffled by the life going on around them at this party–someone’s egging Chan on to clear the furniture and perform his last recital piece–but they huddle together, Mingyu cupping the speaker port.

“Oh,” he says when it registers, head cocked to listen with intent. “Piano song?”

Jihoon smiles, mostly to himself. “‘Simple.’ I named it.”

“Ah,” Mingyu says with a nod, eyes on the screen. “But I thought it was one of your personal ones?”

With a shrug, Jihoon's hand comes down flat over Mingyu’s thigh before yanking on a stray thread. “I didn’t need it anymore,” he says to Mingyu’s knee, and Mingyu listens on for a few, uninterrupted moments. 

He squints. “You know I can only understand half of this?”

“Yes.”

Mingyu listens some more, faint wrinkles between his brows. Jihoon rests an elbow on his shoulder and wonders how obvious they’ll be if they disappear for twenty minutes, tops. Maybe thirty. Maybe an hour. Or just go back to his. He doesn’t think anyone will mind. 

“Is your guide in English, too?”

“The one noona helped me with, yeah. Not the original.”

“Hm.” Mingyu looks at him for a second. “Can you play it for me sometime?”

Jihoon is gnawing on his thumbnail; he smiles around it, drops his hand. “Yeah, I guess. If you want.”

(Dimly, he’s aware of someone’s shutter going off and then, a beat later– _it was cute and now it’s blurry_ Soonyoung says a whine, _so just throw a filter on it, you baby_ , Junhui shoots back.)

The song finishes, but before they can launch into the second, Mingyu slides his index finger across the video, taking them back to the beginning. “So,” he says, easy as anything, “did you write any other songs about me?”

He presses pause and looks up again, bottom lip caught between his teeth, the corners of his mouth turned up. Jihoon squeezes his eyes shut when he laughs, tries to turn away–but fingers come up to line his jaw, halting the movement. The pressure is gentle and welcoming, and all he can do in return is circle a hand around Mingyu’s wrist. Their foreheads knock together, caps impatiently knocked askew, and he feels so _dizzy_ with love it almost doesn’t seem real. 

But it is.

So he opens his eyes.

Jihoon has created countless proxies to say: the way you talk about art is beautiful. When I kiss you, when I hold your hand, I don’t have to overthink a single thing, and that means more to me than any of this other shit.

“I wrote them all about you,” he says, private in the well-worn, well-loved dissonance of this night, _every verse and every refrain, Minggoo_ , and the notes of Mingyu's hushed, pleased laughter settle under Jihoon's skin, finally at home.

* * *

* * *

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ljhmyg) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/ljhmyg)  
> (please feel free to talk to me about Lee Jihoon's Right Nipple Piercing, or namjoon, but only when he's dressed like indiana jones)   
> 


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